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THAT BOY OF YOURS 

SYMPATHETIC STUDIES OF BOYHOOD 



BY 

JAMES S. KIRTLEY 




HODDER & STOUGHTON 

NEW YORK 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Copyright, 1912, 
By George H. Doran Company 



)CU328464 



FOREWORD 

This book has been written for all the friends 
of the boy, including his kindred, guardians, 
teachers and neighbours. My point of view is 
not technical: it is first of all that of a former 
boy. The consciousness of being an ex-boy has 
never left me and my frequent lapses into the 
estate of boyhood have been among the most in- 
forming and refreshing experiences of my life. 
Most of the chapters of this book have been writ- 
ten during those relapses. My point of view has 
been corrected and confirmed by efforts, extend- 
ing over a number of years, to do something for 
boys and with them: those efforts having been of 
more value to me than to the boys. 

I have also sought to avail myself of the knowl- 
edge brought to us by specialists in physiology, 
psychology and pedagogy, though I frankly con- 
fess that some of their views do not always ac- 
cord with those that I have gained from experi- 
ence and observation. 

These thirty-seven chapters seek to give sug- 
gestive answers to as many questions about the 
boy. If they serve that purpose the reader will 
be able to furnish his own answers to the thou- 
sand and one other questions that are sure to come 
up in connection with every boy. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I His Table of Contents 1 

II His Body 7 

III His Appetite 16 

IV His Curiosity 23 

V His Power op Imitation ..... 29 

VI His Imagination 35 

VII Past and Future 44 

VIII His Ills and Epochs 51 

IX His Sports 60 

X His Employments 68 

XI His Possessions 77 

XII His Spare Time 81 

XIII His Looks 87 

XIV His Gang 93 

XV His Chums 99 

XVI His Heroes . . t 104 

XVII His Sweethearts 109 

XVIII Forming His Habits 116 

XIX Cultivating His Will 122 

XX Being His Own Man 129 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEE PAGE 

XXI The Boy Prodigy .... •'. . . 136 

XXII Organising Boys 142 

XXIII His Motives 149 

XXIV His Failings 157 

XXV His Punishments 165 

XXVI His Troubles 171 

XXVII Three Perils 176 

XXVIII His Home 183 

XXIX His Room 190 

XXX His Father 194 

XXXI His Brother and Sister .... 200 

XXXII His Reading 206 

XXXIII His Teacher 212 

XXXIV His Long Apprenticeship .... 219 
XXXV His College Life 225 

XXXVI His Vocation 234 

XXXVII His Religion ........... 240 



THAT BOY OF YOURS 



HIS TABLE OF CONTENTS 

His life is a volume and its contents are volumi- 
nous. Sometimes we feel like calling it a "sacred 
volume' 9 and again a "volume of fantastic lore." 
It becomes a story — an epic, in time — but, to start 
with, it often has the disconnectedness of a dic- 
tionary. 

It would not be hard to make out a boy's "table 
of contents" if he were only a "little man," as 
he is sometimes, playfully or patronisingly, called. 
But he is not a "little man," any more than his 
father is a "big boy," or a caterpillar is a little 
butterfly. He is a prospective man, an enfolded 
man, as his father is an unfolded boy. The differ- 
ence between him and a man is not a difference 
in quantity, or quality, but the difference between 
enfoldedness and unfoldedness. 

When he starts out to be a boy, he is more like 
a little beast and many things that make the dif- 
ference between a man and a beast make no differ- 
ence to him. The saving fact, though, is that he 
is a man in embryo. If the evolutionist is right, 

1 



2 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

the animal structure which he possesses has trav- 
elled all the way from the protozoan to his present 
place as heir apparent to the crown of creation. 
The earth of the animal has not all fallen off yet 
and will not, with his consent, till he begins his 
preparations to quit being a boy. The differ- 
ences between him and the beasts of the field will 
begin to show themselves as his awakening con- 
sciousness gets hold of the task of controlling him. 
He is an animal and we are not allowed to forget 
that, at any time in his career ; but he is more, by 
the measure of infinity. 

There's variety in a boy. The manifold phys- 
ical hungers and thirsts of the animal are in all 
his senses and they keep all the sources of supply 
at work, day and night. Through the wonderful 
nervous system, the nexus between him and his 
body, by which he expresses himself and initiates 
his enterprises, his body is so tied up with the 
mental and moral that its health and purity re- 
quire the same care as do the finest elements and 
essences. His physical elements are, of course, 
the same, in number, as in grown people. Some 
of them are in action, some dormant, some quies- 
cent ; some subordinate, while others are in control 
— such as love and hatred, hope and fear, sense of 
justice, appreciation of the beautiful, the sublime 
and the true, and all the powers of thought and 
will. But even his most active powers are imma- 
ture and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish one 
from another. His power of observation is awake 



HIS TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 

before that of decision, Lis feelings control earlier 
than his reason, his reason before his will and his 
will before his conscience. His sense of the worth 
and the rights of others comes late. But all such 
statements must be general. We cannot time the 
entries as by a watch and say: "In three years 
and six days, his intellect will arrive and begin 
work"; or "When the clock strikes his twelfth 
year, instead of the blind impulses that have been 
controlling him, his will power will awaken and 
assume the control of his career." 

It must also be said that the varied elements of 
his nature are not very well acquainted with each 
other, to begin with. Mutual misunderstandings 
among them take up much of his energy. The 
feelings get into trouble with their neighbours, the 
judgment and the conscience. In the group of 
feelings discords will arise between the different 
kinds. 

Filial sentiments prompt him to obedience, as a 
son, while the food or play instincts may push him 
in a contrary direction. He often knows better 
than he does, better than he wants to do. He may 
never be able to grow out of that infirmity, en- 
tirely, but he may become less infirm, with the 
passing years. He may not have such self-con- 
trol that the remembrance of a stomach-ache, of 
the previous night, will wholly restrain all desire 
for the food that brought it on. He is somewhat 
like the climate of the Holy Land as described in 
a boy's composition: "The climate of Palestine 



4 THAT BOY OF YOUBS 

is very hot and mountainous, especially where the 
country is flat." 

Further — he doesn't seem to be very well ac- 
quainted with himself. He hasn't time to know 
himself — he is too busy being a boy. He learns 
himself by piecemeal. He is sometimes shocked 
by what he discovers, sometimes awed, sometimes 
stricken with fear. When he learns his ability 
to swear or do a mean thing, he often recoils so 
thoroughly as never to go near that sin again. 
He is sometimes alarmed at finding what he lacks 
and what he cannot do. It is not conceit disap- 
pointed, but ignorance made aware of itself. 

At first he doesn't know the law of cause and 
effect. He is ready to pilot a boat, handle fire- 
arms, drive an auto or attempt any daring thing, 
without learning or license. Somewhere within 
that personality of his is a power capable of con- 
trolling and co-ordinating all his curious and con- 
flicting endowments — in time, with some assist- 
ance. 

Another fact or two must be noted. While his 
immature powers are capable of almost limitless 
expansion, they are also susceptible to infection 
from without, with good or evil, in body, mind, 
heart and conscience. While expansion is from 
within, the material for expansion is without. 
The difference between his little body and the big 
body that is to be, he must gather from his en- 
vironment and build into himself. So his little 
body takes hold of his environment of food, air, 



HIS TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 

water, light, and secures the rest of itself. His 
soul, vexed with the sense of its incompleteness, 
may lay hold of truth and fact and love and power 
and righteousness, as he finds them in nature and 
man and God, and grow into its full stature. In 
order to be prompted to self-expansion he has 
hungers, power of discrimination, assimilation, 
imitation and imagination. He is also capable of 
rebirth, through infection from without. Some 
new truth rushes in and there is birth of the mind ; 
some sweet love slips into the heart and there is 
a rebirth of the emotions ; some new beauty flames 
before the vision and there is a rebirth of the 
ideals and the whole life. 

Now, a few suggestions to his friends and kin- 
dred : First — know his contents, at the start and 
at every stage. The study will be more fascinat- 
ing than any romance you ever read. 

Second — read to him his table of contents ; not 
all, at first, but as his understanding and self-con- 
trol allow him to make wise use of the knowledge. 
The pedagogical art reaches its highest achieve- 
ment as it aids you to put him in possession of 
the intimate facts of his unfolding and myste- 
rious powers, in a way to give him mastery of 
himself. 

Third — till he wakens to the task of handling 
his forces, take control of him. He is lost, if some- 
one does not do this. 

Fourth — put him in charge of himself as early 
as possible. Watch for the awakening of his 



6 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

leading powers and train them for their supreme 
mission of self-direction. 

Fifth — guard him against egotism and egoism, 
as well. The egotist thinks much of himself, the 
egoist much about himself — both are to be pitied. 
Too intimate knowledge of himself, at the imma- 
ture stage, will make him both egotistical and 
egoistical. Both evils may be prevented and one 
means of prevention will be some example which 
will disclose his possibilities and stimulate his 
powers. That leads to the next suggestion. 

Sixth — he must see the realization of his ideals, 
must see the finished volume, in the person of his 
father, or some near and dear one, and be led, 
thereby, to aspire and hope. Play with other 
boys and a generous amount of work are usually 
directive toward perfection. He is an instinctive 
imitator; he needs something worth imitating; he 
needs to have right motives implanted. 



n 

HIS BODY 

There is only one other earthly object as at- 
tractive as a well-built, growing lad and one can 
guess that that is a growing girl. The invisible 
angels must be around him, taking notice and get- 
ting points. He has a sense of reverence, too, for 
angelic or other eminent beings. 

We are compelled to confess the accuracy of 
the Psalmist's words and say, he is "fearfully 
and wonderfully made." Muscle and mind and 
morals ; blood and bone and brain and brawn and 
body in general ; playing and praying and pound- 
ing and, sometimes, pouting; jumping and jolting 
and jollying and jostling — such is the medley 
brought to our view by a boy. 

He is not all body, by any means, but he is all 
there in his body, and, if it is not in a condition to 
perform its functions and duties, he is usually 
very unhappy ; if it is ready to co-operate with him 
in his plans, it is his delightful and confidential 
friend. Sickness is tragical. When he must lie 
in the house and hear the merry voices of his 
mates at play, it is one of the acutest sorrows of 
his boyhood. 

His body is the house in which he lives and it 

7 



8 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

is the instrument with which he achieves his pur- 
poses. It is a movable house and can find footing 
and keep its equilibrium at any level or angle, 
between the basement and the cornice just out- 
side the window .of the top floor. He loves to 
make use of his body for falling out of bed in his 
sleep, swinging his legs out of the third story win- 
dow, jumping from the barn loft, sliding down the 
banister without touching his hands, riding a 
bucking broncho, climbing up the water spout, 
yelling himself hoarse and everybody else deaf. 
It is a fine house and a great instrument. 

He usually has to fight for his body and then 
he fights with it. There is an early age, which 
each of us can at least partially remember, when 
predatory diseases were hounding us, and, for 
one boy who escaped, at least three fought it out 
— mumps, measles and the whole list. Sometimes 
he lost his house and was evicted, but usually he 
held possession, though, now and then, a window 
was dimmed, or cracked, or broken, or some use- 
ful or ornamental part was injured. He is bat- 
tling for a good constitution, the foundation of 
his house. It is claimed that between eight and 
twelve, he is fighting for and adopting his consti- 
tution. The rest of the time, till he is twenty-five, 
he is evidently working out his by-laws. 

His passion for running all sorts of risks is one 
of his early perils and it is inveterate. It seems 
scarcely possible for him to escape the fracture 
of a bone. The doctor had to be called, two differ- 



HIS BODY 9 

ent times, to come and put my wrecked collar bone 
into proper connection with the rest of my ana- 
tomical structure, and just how he escaped being 
called twenty times, for similar services, I can't 
understand. And it was before the rage for the 
present style of football, too. Once a horse I was 
riding allowed himself to become excited by my 
intemperate effort to get up speed, and the other 
time a neighbour boy with whom I was wrestling 
had too much muscle for me. But there was val- 
uable education in it all for me. 

As the house in which he lives and the instru- 
ment with which he works, his body is astonish- 
ingly adapted to his purpose. He fills the house 
full. He and the instrument are a part of each 
other. It not only executes his thought but ex- 
presses it, as well. The deaf and dumb show its 
possibilities, as they put the most profound 
truths and delicate feelings into the postures of 
the body, the movements of the hands and the ex- 
pression of the face. If the body is the instru- 
ment for revealing the mind, it ought to be the 
cleanest, keenest, readiest, strongest, best trained 
instrument possible. 

It is also a measure, though not the only 
measure, of the mind's power. Dr. W. T. Porter 
of St. Louis and Dr. Charles Eoberts of England 
have examined many thousand school children 
and have reached the conclusion that there is a 
definite relation between the size, weight, chest 
and girth, on the one side and the intellect, on 



10 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

the other. If the boy is made up of soul and body, 
he reaches perfection in the degree in which the 
two suit each other and work together, under the 
complete control of the mind. 

The body does still more for him. It reacts 
upon him, and he upon it. Air, light and mois- 
ture affect the nerve cells and modify his states 
of mind. If he has not been taught to control 
himself and all his powers, he will become the 
plaything of fitful circumstances. The interplay 
of the two is more singular in a boy than in a 
man. It is claimed that great agony may so ex- 
cite the nerves as to turn the hair grey in one 
night. Anger may paralyse the motor nerves, 
especially those of speech, though it sometimes 
stimulates them. Emotion, especially fear, may 
prostrate like sickness. A thought may start the 
sensor nerves and the motor nerves may follow. 
When a boy thinks of fruit, on returning from 
school in the afternoon, his mouth waters. That's 
the sensor nerves. Then he goes right to where 
the fruit is. That's his motor nerves. We have 
been taught, in many ways, that the mind may 
get so fully in command of the body as to reshape 
it, protecting it from injury and imparting to it a 
higher quality of beauty and strength. 

Conservation of bodily strength, through clean- 
liness and fresh air, is the first thing needed. 
Physical health is a mental and moral asset. The 
development of the body is a discipline of the boy. 
To train the hand is to teach the heart. The edu- 



HIS BODY 11 

cation of muscle and mind goes on at one time. 
The other day the physical director of a Y. M. C. 
A. Boys' department told me he always insists 
that a boy must keep his body clean and go into 
details in doing so. He must keep his finger-nails 
and toe-nails trimmed and clean, see that the 
nasal passages are open, look after his eyes and 
ears and especially his throat. It is important 
for his mental and moral, as well as physical, good. 
Of course, parents have to do this for him till he 
gets the habit of doing it for himself and he will 
get the habit as soon as he sees that something is 
dependent on it or sees someone, on whom he is 
dependent, taking care of himself in the right way. 
A boy usually has a distinct aversion to washing, 
on the ground that he will soon get dirty again. 
A boy sent away from the table to wash his face 
came back with only slight improvement, but re- 
plied to the complaint with which he was greeted, 
"I washed all right, but didn't think it necessary 
to go into details." 

It is almost as important as life itself to have 
him cleanly. It adds to his self-respect and makes 
him careful in other things. It develops self-con- 
trol and is a mental and moral discipline. But, 
at first, he cannot understand much you are doing 
for him, in keeping him clean, rather, in compell- 
ing him to keep himself clean. Family worship 
is superior, in value, only to family cleanliness. 

Conservation, through chastity, is a serious 
necessity. At a certain age of storm and stress 



12 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

his greatest peril is through his sex organisation, 
and he can be mightily helped, at the most critical 
period, by keeping his body clean, while, at the 
same time, you give him the right amount of 
knowledge of his vital physical functions, and 
some conception of his physical sacredness. The 
advice given Wendell Phillips by his mother when 
he started off to college, is just the thing for the 
young boy of the household : "My son, keep your 
linen clean, read your Bible every daj and let 
plenty of fresh air into your room." 

Any form of dissipation is waste of vital ma- 
terial which he will be sure to need in some emer- 
gency. After smoking like a locomotive for a 
number of years, I quit it for three reasons. It 
cost me one hundred cents for every dollar I spent 
and that was a dead loss to me and to others ; it 
was using up good nerve force that I afterwards 
found I needed very much ; it was an example for 
some young fellows to whom I didn't want to teach 
the art of smoking. A good way to help a boy 
avoid that kind of waste is through his talent for 
imitating. 

No mention need be made right here of the right 
kind of food, cooked right and served in generous 
quantities, for that will come in the next chapter. 
The essential thing is that he be put in entire 
charge of his body as soon as possible, with ac- 
curate and reverent knowledge of all its functions, 
the ordinary and extraordinary, the general and 



HIS BODY 13 

special. The brain is of full size by the time he is 
sixteen and he must be in wholesome control of 
his body by that time. 

Something more must be said about the part his 
muscles play in his life. Their weight is 43 per 
cent, of the weight of the whole body and they are 
the instruments for executing the purposes of the 
will and of training it, the organs for the expres- 
sion of the thoughts and feelings in almost endless 
ways, the instruments of digestion, and the means 
of expression of the life in all its deeds. Motor 
discipline is mental development. The culture of 
the muscles reacts on the brain cells as nothing 
else does. To quote from Dr. G. Stanley Hall: 
"Muscles are the vehicles of habituation, imita- 
tion, obedience, character, and even of manners 
and customs. For the young, motor education is 
cardinal and is now coming to due recognition; 
and for all, education is incomplete without a mo- 
tor side. Skill, endurance and perseverance may 
almost be called muscular virtues; and fatigue, 
velleity, caprice, ennui, restlessness, lack of self- 
control and poise, muscular faults." 

The farm is the best place for motor develop- 
ment. The accumulation of muscular power in 
boyhood is the laying up of treasures for the day 
of need. The present is a time of great peril to 
his muscles. In the factories and offices only a few 
of them are called into use, and in all activities, 
machinery relieves him of so much that no one who 



14 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

lives in the city is capable of proper maturity un- 
less he secures scientific physical training. 

There is a principle in nature called the conver- 
sion of energy, by which force passes from lower 
to higher forms; for example, as light, heat and 
electricity. So our bodily powers are to be con- 
verted into love-force, aesthetic -force, mental-force, 
social-force. 

One of the problems most likely to vex his par- 
ents and friends is his irregular growth. Some- 
times his bones grow faster than his muscles and 
sometimes the muscles are in the lead ; and, all the 
time, mysterious powers are awaking. That re- 
quires cleanliness. The old Mosaic teachings gave 
the Jews a most sanitary law. The physicians of 
to-day have learned that the old Hebrew rite is 
well-nigh essential to the well-being of the boy and 
of untold value in his mental and moral life. 
Some day the parents who neglect that provision 
against bodily and moral disease will be the ex- 
ception to the general rule. 

To summarise: there must be development of 
strength through food, work, play, physical ex- 
ercise of special kinds and cheerfulness; conser- 
vation of power, through cleanliness, chastity, 
self-control, service; refinement of power, by 
conversion into the higher form of force — ethical, 
religious, mental, aesthetic, social, — through mind 
treatment and control of all bodily functions and 
organs; and the consecration of each and all to 
life's sublime purposes. This is the task; it is not 



HIS BODY 15 

small. Nature expects him to achieve his long 
and difficult task, in the three old ways, listening 
to precepts — knowledge; imitating examples — in- 
spiration ; trying to do it — experience. 



Ill 

HIS APPETITE 

This is a capacious subject, wide, deep and long. 
A boy, when asked if he could name the three 
graces, replied: "Yes; breakfast, dinner and 
supper." The answer is instructive. He must 
have food because he has a body to build, a house 
in which his growing soul can have plenty of. room 
to expand ; it must become the enduring and reli- 
able instrument for accomplishing his mission in 
the world. In building that body he must put into 
it reserves on which he can make unlimited drafts 
for meeting life's duties and exigencies. 

A grown man's body has already been built and 
he needs only enough food to keep up the repairs 
and decorations and enable him to do his work ; a 
boy has to take in enough, each day, to go on with 
the building, keep up the repairs, do the decorat- 
ing, achieve his mission, as a boy, and put some- 
thing in the reserve fund besides. He starts in at 
a rapid pace, seeking refreshments every waking 
hour, and by the time he is fifteen or twenty, he has 
reached a speed that is as exciting to the onlookers 
as it is exhilarating to himself. 

His reputation, in that respect, stands on the 
solid foundation of achievement. A teacher, in 

16 



HIS APPETITE 17 

talking with some friends about the gustatory 
habits of certain animals, said: "Now, the cater- 
pillar will eat six hundred times its own weight, 
in one month's time," and an old lady, somewhat 
deaf, leaned over and asked: "Whose boy did 
you say?" 

A large part of his food supply is used up in his 
activities. His first six years are his most active 
time and he doesn't slow up much till he is six- 
teen. His heaviest eating is at that time, just as 
he is finishing his brain structure. 

Each man with a spark of memory can confirm 
these statements from his own experience. In the 
spring time, down on the farm, I used to go out to 
the field in the morning with all the pockets in 
coat and trousers full of apples, and come back at 
noon with all those apples inside of me, but ready 
for a dinner of ham and eggs and cabbage and 
potatoes and milk and two kinds of hot bread, and 
pie, or cobbler, and the rest. History would re- 
peat itself in the afternoon, and an equal load of 
apples would be taken to the field, to prevent utter 
starvation and to prime the appetite for supper. 
An iron constitution was the result of those mar- 
velous gastronomic feats, to say nothing of the 
unusual amount of work I was thereby enabled 
to accomplish, at ploughing and other jobs. 

If the boy in question lives in the country, as I 
did, and ploughs corn, as I did when I couldn't get 
out of it, he can plough all day, as I did, when I 
simply had to, eat three suppers at once, as I 



"18 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

never failed to do, go to bed and plough all night — 
as I always did — and if he sleeps with his older 
brother, as I did, he can make that brother wish 
he had never been born; then he will be ready 
for a conple of breakfasts and for work, while his 
brother will mope around and regret the day he 
formed the acquaintance of his younger brother. 
But that's really another story. 

Now, as he would have to have that food for 
these sacred purposes, whether he liked food or 
not, what a fortunate thing it is that he really 
likes it. Otherwise, eating would be mere drud- 
gery, like the work of the roustabouts loading a 
steamboat while the mate drives and curses and 
threatens them. As it is, taking on those supplies 
is one of the delights of his boyhood. 

That appetite of his, unless it is tampered with, 
is one of the most intelligent of all the faculties 
with which he works, and it helps him solve some 
vital and far-reaching problems. Later on, his 
judgment will help, when it learns how, but his 
appetite is looking after his interests all the time 
— by desiring food, discriminating, appropriating 
and discarding. The building he is erecting and 
the machine he is constructing out of his food re- 
quire three things — a great variety of material, 
the best quality and large quantities, as before 
mentioned. We get a good idea of the variety 
required from the analysis of the human body 
which scientists have made. It is found to have 
lime, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, iron 



HIS APPETITE 19 

and some other ingredients and they all go into the 
body as food, except what comes in as air, which 
is mainly oxygen. They have to be in the right 
proportions, too. Imagine the result if he gets 
too much lime and runs to bones ; or oxygen and 
becomes flighty and fighty. Too much phosphorus 
will turn him into a will o' the wisp. 

No boy, no doctor, could tell, for the life of him, 
exactly the proportion in which he should com- 
bine these ingredients, at a given time, and there 
is where his intelligent appetite comes to his aid 
and saves the day. To prevent neglect of eating, 
nature keeps him hungry all the time, and to keep 
him from overstocking himself with any one 
chemical element she gives his appetite a desire 
for the thing he needs, at a given time. An appe- 
tite that works normally is better than a doctor 
or a trained nurse. "When he needs acids it 
prompts him to lemonade, or pickles, or butter- 
milk, or fruit. When he needs alkalies, or fats, 
the signal comes in at the proper time and in a 
convincing way. He is always obedient to the 
inner light on this duty. Of course, if his appe- 
tite is mistreated, it loses its discrimination and 
skill. That is one reason I am writing on the 
subject. 

In this building scheme, his parents are usually 
the superintendents of construction, while he is 
contractor and builder. By and by, he will take 
over their part as well as his own. They have 
to get him trained to take complete charge. 



20 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

Is he equal to the task of providing the material 
in sufficient quantity and quality and variety? He 
is apt to get enough if it is in reach. And this is 
where responsibility rests on somebody. If any 
one is to be denied the required food, it must be 
the grown person, who has finished his building 
projects, and not the boy, whose structure is now 
going up and must not be interfered with. 

Even though his appetite remains unperverted 
and decides, with accuracy, what he needs at a 
particular time, he requires the assistance of ex- 
perienced people to keep it in a sound and trust- 
worthy condition till he can acquire a sufficient 
stock of knowledge and experience to keep it safe 
and sane. It is definitely known to grown people, 
though not to him till he is taught it, that tobacco 
and alcohol always impair the functions of the 
body. The judges of our juvenile courts say that 
the cigarette fiend is a hopeless case. 

We do not protect our boys against dangers 
from appetite as we should. It looks big to chew 
and smoke and it appeals to a boy's unregulated 
vanity; it makes him seem like an older person 
and that appeals to his passion to imitate the 
older boys. As well poison the food itself as the 
power by which he selects and judges and digests 
his food. 

But the most serious fact is that his food has 
so much to do with his mind and character. 
Chemical changes in the body, due to food, are 
paralleled by changes in his emotions. His soul 



HIS APPETITE 21 

throbs to his heart-beats. At the time when the 
physical hungers are greatest, the mind and heart 
hungers are most restless and eager. As the ab- 
sorption of food increases the soul gathers love 
and truth and all the elements of character more 
rapidly. The two processes are suggestively 
synchronous. Character takes tone from its 
fleshly home. Food seems to get built into the 
mind and the emotions. 

The conversion of meat into man, of food into 
feeling, is a true and an interesting process which 
we might well wish to watch closely. Food be- 
comes blood and blood builds bones and muscles 
and nerves and brain tissues, and, from that 
physical basis, we get the power to think and feel 
and will and do. So thoughts and books and 
pictures and statues and music and achievements 
come from that food. Longfellow well says: 
"He that drinks wine thinks wine, he that drinks 
beer thinks beer." 

The boy has the right, then, to have good food 
and enough of it and to have the wise oversight of 
those who are over him. Whatever of love-value 
and thought-value and will-value and art-value is 
in food he must be taught to find, and to release 
and take only those values in his selection and 
use of it. 

The destruction of values is one thing; the 
utilisation of values another. When one takes 
in liquor, he wasts that much money, besides the 
injury to his body. The values of the food may 



22 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

be lost by too rapid eating. Haste and nervous- 
ness lead to the galloping style of eating. The 
boy may not Fletcherise, but he may be taught to 
put himself into his eating, which is next in im- 
portance to putting the eatables into himself. 
He should chew as long as he can teach himself 
to enjoy that particular mouthful. Eating is an 
art which he must be taught as he is taught the 
art of painting, or bookkeeping, or printing, or 
engineering. 



IV 

HIS CURIOSITY 

There is a time when the "Boy Question" is 
very largely a matter of the boy's questions. 
And that is no small matter. He conducts what 
may be called a questionaire. He is a disciple of 
Socrates. It is a continuous affair, with no recess 
or vacation. He does it for the same reason that 
he plays — he can't help it. When he finds an agi- 
tation going on in his brain and nerves and mus- 
cles and bones, and all of them telling him to play, 
and good opportunities for play all around him, 
what else can he do? And when there is such a 
noisy agitation in his soul compelling him to learn, 
with so many things to look into, what can he do 
but ask about them? The mysteries of stars, 
suns, moons, snow and hail, steam, electricity, 
grey hairs, bald heads, and a million other things 
must be explained — and on the spot. 

He never knows that he sometimes gets himself 
disliked. If he did he would want to know why, 
and all about it. He is not "stuck up," to use a 
phrase that he will understand at once, but enlists 
every one he meets as a co-laborer in his pursuit 
of knowledge, reserving his father for special co- 
operation during the latter 's hours of rest. He 

23 



24 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

is not partial nor dilatory, but takes up every 
matter as it comes for immediate investigation. 
He works rapidly and can inquire into a great 
variety of subjects in the same breath. 

He has to ask questions in order to give his 
strenuous grey matter something to do, and he 
needs the knowledge that he seeks. To be sure 
he can learn by looking, but he can't gather in- 
formation that way quite as fast as he can store 
it away in his memory, and laying things in store 
is his main business. Besides, there is so much 
to learn that he will never get his share unless he 
avails himself of all possible assistance. 

And, come to think of it, what else are the other 
people here for but to put him in possession of 
what they have? By and by he will be able to 
dispense with a few questions — not "let up," but 
only slow up — and reason out certain things alone, 
but not yet; for the activity and the thirst for 
knowledge and the questions begin with his first 
words, and reason will not take up the task till 
he is somewhat older. 

You may say that from three to thirteen, he is 
an interrogation mark. During that time he 
might find an inviting vocation for his shining 
gifts as a lawyer to conduct cross-examinations, 
or a chief of police to preside over the sweat box 
and administer the " third degree." 

He is getting discipline and knowledge, and he 
is "getting the habit," which is better still. He 
is preparing to get along without asking questions, 



HIS CURIOSITY 25 

which is not a bad thing. His active mind is send- 
ing impressions along the brain cells and marking 
out a permanent path for truth to travel, and he 
is also acquiring the material which reason will 
use some day, in its work. 

Even at the worst he is more than a combination 
of muddy clothes, noise and questions. Besides 
the good he is getting think of what he is giving. 
Think of how he is driving his father, especially, 
down into his own inner life and back into his own 
boyhood's history to learn the significance of all 
this questioning, thus leading him to wholesome 
introspection and inspiring recollection, and mak- 
ing him a bright, new, up-to-date man. 

Think of the fine intellectual drill he is taking 
his father through, as he puts to him questions 
that would puzzle lawyers, and scientists, and 
philosophers and theologians, questions which his 
father must unravel and answer sensibly. And 
the boy always knows when the latter is talking 
sense, even though the question may not be much 
better than some civil service questions. When 
Artemus Ward wrote his grotesque travesty of 
the list of life insurance questions, he was prob- 
ably in a reminiscent mood and was reviving an 
old boyhood trick: "Are you male or female? 
If so, how long have you been so?" 

Think of the ready market the boy furnishes for 
your stores of knowledge, when perhaps he is the 
only living being who would listen at all. An at- 
tentive listener like him is not picked up every 



26 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

day. You might write newspaper articles and 
whole books without finding the hospitality for 
your ideas that a boy will give when you answer 
his questions. It is to many a rare chance that 
may never come again. No one can question the 
educational value of questions, both for ques- 
tioner and questioned. To suppress them is to 
suppress him ; to direct and answer them is to dis- 
cipline and develop him ; to do it in the spirit of 
co-operation is to enter into a sacred partnership 
with him. 

We come to see that his curiosity is the divinely 
established method by which he % passes from 
ignorance to knowledge, from weakness to 
strength. It is the same spirit of investigation 
that will lead him and many other men to climb 
mountains, explore the unknown corners of the 
world, torture nature until she reveals her secrets, 
and make contrivances different from any that 
have been known heretofore. The boy's curiosity 
is the condition of the man's culture, his questions 
are the prelude to his conquests, his dissatisfac- 
tions the means of his discipline. 

There are right ways to meet his questions and, 
first of all, we must recognise his right to ask 
questions and to receive the right kind of answers. 
To discourage them is to encourage ignorance and 
weaken his desire for knowledge. To refuse to 
listen to them is to refuse to learn his nature and 
needs. A shrewd parent can learn more from a 
child's questions than the child can learn from his 



HIS CURIOSITY 27 

answers. Answers require truth and wisdom. 
The opportunity to teach and train, by answering 
questions, is one which any parent may covet. 

But it is not in questions alone that his curiosity 
shows itself. It prompts the boy to all kinds of 
destructiveness simply because he wants to see 
what things are made of. His toys become tire- 
some if he can not make them yield that desired 
knowledge. A clock that only keeps time is a poor 
thing to him. If he can take it to pieces it is a 
good clock, even though he never gets it together 
again. This method of investigation, by dis- 
section, is the one he will use as a physician or 
geologist or chemist or inventor ; and he is learn- 
ing how, while a boy. Every boy has a right to 
toys and blocks and implements that he can in- 
vestigate in that way. A man who understands 
a boy's curiosity and knows how to deal with it 
is master of priceless knowledge. One who sup- 
presses those questions ought to be suppressed; 
one who never excites them must be abnormal. 

His curiosity holds in it the germs of reverence 
for the transcendent, rulership over the dependent 
and fellowship with the personalities involved in 
his search for truth. The treatment his curiosity 
calls forth may break down reverence or build it 
up, make him a prince or a puppet in the realm 
into which his curiosity leads him; may estab- 
lish him in the friendship of the eternal, or drive 
him back into selfish pauperism. Every answer- 
able question ought to be studied out, if you have 



28 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

not an answer at once, bnt it will also prove very 
wholesome to him when you confess your igno- 
rance and thereby enter into comradeship with 
him in the search for truth. 



HIS POWER OF IMITATION 

Two indispensable powers possessed by the boy 
are imagination and imitation. They awake early 
and work until he is dead. With him imitation is 
not limitation; it is life and enlargement. He is 
like the chameleon that takes its hues from its 
environment. 

At the start he acts on blind impulse, automatic 
at that, as he swings about and grasps at every- 
thing from his mother to the moon. From ir- 
regular action to unconscious imitation is an easy 
and unobserved transition. 

Soon he gets to imitating consciously and he 
never stops. Nature was wise in ordaining it so. 
That is the way he grows, for imitation is ap- 
propriation. He answers your smile with a smile, 
your frown with a similar frown, your love with 
love, your hatred with hatred. He does this at 
first without knowing it, then he does it purposely, 
and by this time he has the habit. 

He walks because he sees other folks walking, 
likes the idea and takes over the diversion. And 
the risks he runs are numerous and various. If 
he were reared among animals he would probably 
walk on all fours and chatter or grunt as they do, 

29 



30 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

and perhaps consider his occasional impulses to 
stand on his pastern joints as a strange discom- 
fort. When he is brought up entirely with grown 
up people he is old while young — a grown up be- 
fore he grows up. He plays because — no, I sup- 
pose he would play anyhow; but he plays in the 
way he does because he sees others play that way. 

He is a reflector long before the reflective age, 
the tones and sentiments and manners of the 
people around him finding an embodiment in him 
and a second expression by him. Not that he is 
just an echo. He knows how to wake the echoes 
himself; but he also knows how to echo and he 
does it. He never went to a circus in his life with- 
out wanting to get up one at home, and doing it. 
Attending fires is one of the solemn duties of his 
boyhood, and, if domestic sentiment was not too 
strong against it, he would have them at home; 
though attending to the fire is not in his line. He 
learns to swim by watching others, and the frogs. 
He plays church and school ; sings and scolds ; yells 
at the smaller members of the family or com- 
munity in the same terms and tones that were used 
on him — all a matter of reflection. 

He is not contented that he has only imitation. 
He has initiative. He is original. It was a boy 
that saw the steam lift the lid off his mother's tea- 
kettle and got up an imitation that has lifted the 
life of mankind. If we could trace the history of 
aeronautics, we would find that some boy started 
that form of enterprise by making a descent from 



HIS POWER OF IMITATION 31 

the barn loft with his father's umbrella for a 
parachute, or that some man did it with the gift 
of imitation cultivated so carefully in boyhood. 
He learns to apply the most recondite knowledge 
to the most common conditions. 

There are some things a boy naturally imitates, 
with more or less ease, simply because he is a boy; 
then there are some things he imitates at one 
stage and others at another. 

There may be an unspoiled, but not an unsoiled, 
simplicity of boyhood. The dainty little girl will 
keep her white dress and pink ribbons up to the 
standard of the angels whom she imitates; while 
the dirty little boy will emerge from the puddle 
where he has had a good time with his friends, the 
pigs, whom he imitates when he can. 

His words betray him — odd words, big words, 
long words, lurid words. They show their origin. 
The waiting boy in the reception-room of a wealthy 
and cultured Bostonian's office made me feel that 
I was talking to my host himself. Words that 
express strong feeling in a picturesque, acrid, or 
even a profane way, appeal to him. Slang is his 
favourite vehicle of expression. He remembers 
all he hears and can reproduce it. It is the ob- 
jective, the active, the large that wins him, at first. 

He imitates actions as well as words; gathers 
the ideals as well as actions ; most of all feels the 
spell of compelling personalities. Those two lads, 
sons of Jack Abernethy, United States Marshal 
for Oklahoma, who rode horseback all the way 



32 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

from Oklahoma to New York to serve on the re- 
ception committee when Eoosevelt was welcomed 
home from Africa, enjoyed that trip far more 
than if. they had gone in a palace car, because their 
adored " Teddy " and their father were Bough 
Eiders. The boy is a hero worshipper from the 
beginning. It is the man he imitates. He would 
rather be like some fascinating man than be an 
angel — for a while at least. 

In the first stage, from one to six years, his life 
is automatic and impulsive, and what appeals to 
those impulses he imitates. During the next stage 
the impulse gets differentiated. He is a natural 
insurgent from eight to twelve. The strain on 
him is terrific as his habits get formed. It must 
have been of the boy of this stage that Carlyle 
said ought to be brought up in a barrel and fed 
through the bunghole. But it was only Carlyle 
who said it. He never had a boy, though his 
father had. In this second stage he is forming 
habits. 

In the first stage he imitates actions; in the 
second: stage, words and the habits of mind back 
of the words ; in the third stage, though he imitates 
less, he copies after ideals and social habits. 

Back of all this imitation there is the hunger and 
thirst for completing himself, creative self-expres- 
sion, though he doesn't know what it is. It shows 
the truth of the old saying that example is better 
than precept, because it contains both and makes 
them practical. It is better than punishment. 



HIS POWER OF IMITATION 33 

Imitation is always in the direction of bis in- 
terests and those interests are such as appeal to 
his activities. He likes the concrete, the simple. 
He thinks of God's activities rather than his at- 
tributes, of His powers rather than His moral 
perfections. He enjoys nature not as the scien- 
tist, but as the hunter, the farmer, the traveller or 
the stockman does. He gets all the geology and 
ornithology he wants by throwing rocks and find- 
ing birds' nests. He goes on the principle, held 
unconsciously, that ideas are made for embodi- 
ment in actions ; grown people may express theirs 
in words, but works alone are capable of fitly 
speaking his own. So when he finds any action 
he likes, he imitates it, though he reproduces 
words and tones and habits of speech as well. 
This is also a divine arrangement for his growth. 
The result of imitation is enlargement of life and 
habit. Thus he comes to the mastery of him- 
self. 

If those in charge of him are wise they will: 
1. Take advantage of his impulse to imitate and 
give him the play that will develop it. 

2. In his next stage they will make the play 
more or less dramatic, always accurate; will 
awaken interest as well as impulse ; attract, draw, 
rather than drive ; aim to give him what is worth 
imitating in thought, words and character. 

3. In the latter stage give him comradeship that 
will develop his character. Almost every crim- 
inal could have been saved from crime by a proper 



34 THAT BOY OF YOUKS 

appeal to his instinct of imitation. Words, ac- 
tions, people, must be worthy of imitation. 

Thus he can be led from rocks and birds' nests 
to geology and ornithology; from impulse to 
habit; from imitation to origination; from build- 
ing houses with blocks to building blocks of houses 
and creating and conducting business enterprises. 



VI 

HIS IMAGINATION 

"Seeing things at night,' ' is tame compared 
with the way a boy sees things with his eyes wide 
open, things that are not so, at that. At the time 
he is four or five years old the power to see the 
unseen, to make images of invisible things, is ac- 
tive and it is riotous when he gets into his teens. 

It is the same power we have, only it is about 
all he does have, while we are now, at least some 
of us are, or are supposed to be, in possession of 
judgment, reason and some other faculties that 
have gotten active enough to make us forget our 
imagination and in some instances to give up the 
image-making business altogether. But, in the 
boy, the imagination is one of the first faculties 
awake and it is hard at work when reason and the 
will and judgment and conscience first open their 
eyes. Up to that time it works without their as- 
sistance and is untethered. Two facts about him 
seem to contradict each other. One is that his 
acute senses make very accurate observations of 
real things ; the other, that his active imagination 
knows no bounds. 

It is not hard work, either; it does itself. In 
that case we call it passive imagination. There 

35 



36 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

is something in him like wings and they insist on 
flying. He does not yet care where they take him. 
So they flit from point to point, as they will, with- 
out restraint, or direction from reason or will. 
After awhile he will be able to hold that sight on 
an object as long as he wishes and his imagination 
will enter on a new phase. At first the things he 
remembers attract him most, and for that reason, 
some have called it mere memory ; yet it is some- 
times more. But when he begins to take charge 
of it, we say it is active imagination. And per- 
haps that is where we can appreciate Binet's re- 
mark that it is "the faculty of creating groups of 
images which do not correspond to any external 
reality.' 9 This day-dreaming is not wrong, 
either. He has to do it, whether right or wrong, 
though he may do it in a right or wrong way. 

In the first stage he is always turning some- 
thing into something else more to his liking, as 
when little Billie, standing by the post, began to 
turn an unseen faucet and catch unseen soda 
water in his real cup, making the fizz with his lips, 
and to call out: "Come on, boys, it's my treat;" 
everybody saw what Billie saw and drank his soda 
water, till they came to Joe, who showed he was 
a freak, by snarling out: "Naw; you ain't got 
no soda water; you know you ain't." He changes 
toys into soldiers and has them fight each other, 
makes his sisters fairies and another little girl a 
queen. He says: "I am a coachman," and he 
is one. One minute he is Theodore Eoosevelt at 



HIS IMAGINATION 37 

the head of his Rough Riders, and the next minute 
the same dashing leader, charging the hippopot- 
ami in Africa. Henry Mills Alden says that 
genius is creative imagination and ingenuity is its 
power of insight. 

At times it makes him seem only a precocious 
perverter of truth, but it has never dawned on him 
that he is anything but scientifically accurate. 
With that magic wand he transforms deserts into 
gardens, fills his pockets with gold, beholds cats 
turn into tigers, dogs into bears and himself into 
a prince with chariots and attendants and heroic 
halos, or into anything else he pleases. He was, 
without doubt, the one who gave points to Ibsen 
in the creation of Peer Gynt. Little Ned's imagi- 
nation worked in such daring ways that his mother 
forbade it, like those good men who forbade the 
comet coming nearer our earth. One day, in spite 
of warnings, he came in with: "Oh, Mamma, I 
saw a great, big, black bear out in the orchard.' 9 
Of course she rebuked him and then inquired of his 
older sister, who said with great contempt in her 
voice: "It was only a little black dog!" She 
solemnly took him upstairs and said: "Now, 
Ned, go into that room, kneel down and tell God 
how naughty you were and ask him to forgive 
you." 

He cheerfully went in and presently came out 
with a smiling face. "And did you tell God and 
ask him to forgive you?" "Yes, and, Mamma, he 
said the first time he saw that dog, he thought it 



38 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

was a bear, too." That was when Ned was very 
small, before he was eight years old and he lived 
in a world of make-believe. His mother may have 
spoiled him; she may have explained to him that 
it was "play," and thereby saved him. 

He may even go so far as to transform himself 
into another person — say the king of England, or 
Mr. Rockefeller, or Capt Kidd, or an Indian Chief. 
He and his ehum have been known to exchange 
personalities in a way that was quite real. In play 
it is one of the easiest things for him to become 
an Indian. "When he came in, the other evening, 
from play, muttering : " S 'blood ! I have thee ! ! 
Unhand me, villain!!!" you knew what had been 
going on. Sir James Mackintosh, at twelve, after 
reading Roman history, used to fancy himself the 
Emperor of Constantinople and devoted hours at 
a time to his arduous administrative duties. Ado- 
escence is the golden age of the imagination. That 
is what makes prodigies. 

After he is seven or eight, he sees things more 
in groups and connections; and still later, in his 
teens, his reason and purpose take charge of the 
aerial thing. Sometimes people succeed in killing 
it and, in that case, he is dead from that time on. 
The reason the Wrights and Curtiss and Hamilton 
and the other flyers can navigate the air is that 
they have been doing it in imagination, for a long 
time. So it is the magical power that begins, 
when he is very young, and stays with him till he 
dies, or till his heart dies. It is his Aladdin's 



HIS IMAGINATION 39 

lamp whose rays disclose all he wishes and changes 
stones into crystals, his "Fortunatus* purse that 
holds the treasures of the universe." 

It is the mother of his mirth, the spring of his 
smiles. It is closely and causally related to a sav- 
ing sense of humour. That is why a boy in Kan- 
sas City rose from his seat in a crowded street car 
when a fat woman entered and said : ' ' Gentlemen, 
I will be one of three to get up and give this lady 
a seat. " Even his unconscious humour flows from 
this source, as when the teacher said: " Tommy, 
why do you think I scold so much?" " 'Cause 
you get kind o' fretful teachin' school, I s'pose," 
was his honest reply. 

There is no other way to explain how he can do 
so much — he sees it beforehand. Mr. Ferris was 
told that, by the laws of mechanics, no such wheel 
was possible, but after long study, he suddenly 
saw that wheel, with his mind's eye, as he sat in a 
restaurant in Chicago; and then building it was 
the easiest part of it all. Von Moltke was in bed 
when the word came that France had declared war 
and he quietly looked in a certain pigeon-hole for 
several telegrams and said "Send them." Then 
he went to sleep again. He had foreseen it all 
and had every plan made. 

Imagination gives wings to his hope, feet to his 
reason, force to his decisions and vividness to his 
memory. It furnishes him invisible armour and 
victorious arms for his battle against the false and 
vicious and vulgar; for he can picture to himself 



40 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

the ideal, true and virtuous and good and then 
make them real. It enables him to secure control 
of himself at the time when he is becoming ac- 
juainted with his own volatile and mysterious pow- 
ers, for he can be made to see the vast benefits to 
come from such self-control. 

That is one reason why he enjoys the present so 
much and anticipates the future so eagerly — he 
sees so much in them. And it may be added, that 
is the reason he can endure the present when older 
people treat him so unjustly on the ground that he 
is only a boy and it makes no difference how he is 
treated. In one respect he is like Moses who en- 
dured because he saw the invisible. 

A boy has that profound something in him which 
we call subconsciousness. Imagination is the 
means of bringing in suggestions from the outside 
and taking them out again into the life. After 
awhile it does better than that — it enables him to 
make suggestions to himself, and we call that 
auto-suggestion. 

The imagination is a servant willing to bring in 
any suggestion, even when it plays havoc with the 
life. Mrs. Lamoreaux tells of a speaker who, 
when talking to a Sunday-school about the fixed- 
ness of habits, said that if they wrote their names 
in the cement sidewalk while it was soft, the writ- 
ing would last as long as the walks. Of course 
the boys did the writing, without any loss of time. 

"When he is very young, his imagination is a 
great convenience to the boy's parents, for he can 



HIS IMAGINATION 41 

have the benefit of boat rides and car rides within 
doors, with the aid of chairs and brooms. Then 
when the reason begins to unfold, he uses it with 
vividness. When his memory is most active, from 
ten to fifteen, the imagination fairly riots. When 
the social instincts are getting into control, it 
makes him a hero worshipper ready for altruistic 
adventure, and as life looms up mysterious and 
fascinating, it gives him dreams of conquest. 

We must not forget that what he sees and hears 
and remembers is the material out of which his 
imagination forms the pictures which lure him on. 
We have heard the story of the woman who told 
the minister that her husband and two sons were 
lost at sea and now the youngest was anxious to 
become a sailor. He pointed to a picture on the 
wall, a vessel in full sail, and said : ' l That picture 
will drive him to the sea." The vicious and ob- 
scene furnish material which fascinates the un- 
trained or wayward imagination. 

Our power is also our weakness. Our imagi- 
nation is more powerful now than it ever was 
before. It gives greater opportunity for mental 
and moral uncleanness and enables the latter to 
break us down more rapidly. Much of the injury 
to boyhood is to be traced to an outraged imagina- 
tion. 

Personal care of the body gets aid from the im- 
agination, as the latter helps him fashion an ideal 
for his true self which always works towards 
health and symmetry and artistic excellence. A 



42 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

good imagination is good hygiene. Experience 
and imagination join in teaching him to anticipate 
the results of a given action so vividly as to re- 
strain from the wrong and constrain to the right. 
The boy looks ahead. He will need that power in 
business, if he is a bootblack, or a merchant, or a 
lawyer, or a — well, anything. But peril must be 
faced. If his imagination is not disciplined and if 
he is very fond of success, he may become a liar of 
the worst kind. 

After serving boyhood in such wholesome fash- 
ion, this power abides in manhood to perform an 
enlarged function in transforming ideas instead of 
things, dealing with ideals and changing the 
dreams of boyhood into the deeds of manhood. 

To check it is to turn the boy into a dwarf or a 
deceitful hypocrite. To direct it is to develop 
him ; to keep it chaste is to protect him. Fortunate 
for him if he lives in the country, where nature 
gives him vast spaces and her inspiring fellow- 
ship. Happier still if he lives in a home where 
all that he sees and hears becomes good material 
for the house of life which his imagination is 
building. 

Hall says: "The roots of play lie close to 
those of creative imagination and idealism.' ' 
Then play is important. In adolescence the boy 
longs for comradeship which he can idealise, and 
he thereby affords his parents a rare chance. 
The truths given to him in literature and in life 



HIS IMAGINATION 43 

become the starting points of his idealising im- 
age-making. Manual activity is the best method 
of balancing and sobering his power of imagina- 
tion. 



VII 

PAST AETD FUTURE 

If some of the scientists are right, the boy 
had the same physical start as other animals, but 
has travelled farther and somewhere, on the way, 
a new power has got into him and made a differ- 
ence as wide as the universe between him and 
them. They also tell us that there are many 
remnants left in him, of former stages of life, 
like scaffolding left around a building after it is 
completed, and that he is a sort of recapitulation 
of all those stages ; they say, also, that the stages 
of his moral, mental and religious growth corre- 
spond to the stages of growth which the race has 
made. But upon that point we need not linger, 
for it is only an unproven theory; observation 
shows, however, that he grows through stages 
which are as interesting as they are exciting. 

We know that while it was divinely arranged 
that he should have a physical origin and should 
bear a necessary likeness to his ancestors, a re- 
sponsible and epoch-making ancestor of his was 
made in the image of God, in his moral nature, 
and though there has been a break in the image, 
he is a descendant of that ancestor and still shows 
traces of the descent. Like produces like, even 

44 



PAST AND FUTURE 45 

though there is some personal unlikeness. His 
heavenly origin is not to be forgotten. His body 
is not only divinely fashioned, but divinely fur- 
nished with its occupant, whether he is good or 
bad. 

His origin in God must be made a distinct con- 
sciousness with him, as soon as possible. He 
should learn that his body is made from matter 
which God created, and according to a pattern 
which He devised and worked out, whatever the 
physical agencies employed in the reproduction of 
the pattern; that his spirit is a reproduction, 
though a distorted one, of God's image. That is 
the thrilling truth about him and for him, a truth 
of which he must be put in possession, so as to 
make it vital and constructive in his life. It can 
be taught in simple, untechnical statements and in 
the form of life, the life of those who show that 
they have learned that same truth and are living 
it. 

I have been speaking of general human heredity. 
His personal traits, which make him the kind of a 
boy he is, are due to the kind of ancestors he has. 
Heredity is a great, serious, sometimes comical, 
but oftener, tragical, force with him. He is more 
apt to be like his immediate ancestors, yet, some- 
times, by a curious kind of perversity, he runs 
back into the generations and selects some ridicu- 
lous, or contemptible, trait and builds the freak- 
ish thing into the house of his life. That ancestor, 
or kinsman, may have been a pirate or a horse 



46 THAT BQY OF YOUES 

thief, who ought to have been hung long before 
he persuaded some woman to marry him. "Ata- 
vism" is the word which tells that a boy has run 
back to get his traits. No one knows when his 
child will do that foolish thing. The laws of hered- 
ity work in unusual ways at times. Fifty years 
ago an old monk — Mendel of Brun — got to study- 
ing this matter of heredity and got up a theory 
which, his followers have thought, explains the 
method of transmitting traits. But the simple 
fact is that a boy can't afford to have bad ances- 
tors. 

As a general thing, as already stated, the boy 
gets his traits from the nearest generation and 
that generation constitutes his environment as well 
as his heredity. His parents should be able to 
endow him with the very qualities he will need 
all his life and should see that he uses them; if 
not, they have no right to undertake to endow 
him at all, no right to undertake him. As he has 
to take what they give him, they are the ones to 
whom I am most emphatically speaking. An- 
other thing to be noted is that he is a blend, which 
makes a new type, a product resulting from the 
union of two streams of ancestral traits, and he 
is different from the product of any other similar 
union in the history of the race. 

So there are some unchosen factors working in 
the production of the boy, many and mighty and 
mystifying — his ancestors, remote and immediate, 
his place of birth and residence, his schools and 



PAST AND FUTURE 47 

companions, the atmosphere in which he lives. He 
cannot choose his parents, though I know some 
boys who must regret, to their dying day, that they 
didn't have that privilege. He has to take the 
kind of eyes, nose, teeth, chin, ears and feet they 
give him. You will not find one boy in a thousand 
who has not spent valuable time wishing his nose 
were of a different variety, or his lip not so long, 
or his feet not so ambitious. Even before girls 
get mixed up in his vision he is sure to utilise the 
mirror in making careful investigation of his de- 
fects. 

The community in which he is reared is not of 
his choosing and is regarded as not of his con- 
cern, though many a boy is ruined by it. When 
their parents died Tom was put into one family, 
Joe into another. Tom became a credit to the 
memory of his noble father; Joe was poisoned to 
the tips of his soul and life, poisoned forever by 
his environment. 

A boy's past often dominates his future. At- 
mosphere does it, and that is prepared for him. 
It may be heavy with unbearable burdens and lack 
of appreciation ; or fetid with moral pollution ; or 
too rare with adulation and false pleasures; or 
languid with enervating luxury ; or poisoned with 
hypocrisy and pretence. The atmosphere sur- 
rounding the earth seems to be a sort of exhala- 
tion of the earth itself, for it has in it some of the 
very elements found in the earth, nitrogen, oxygen, 
hydrogen. The atmosphere of the home is a com- 



48 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

posite of the exhaled characters of those who 
make the home. 

All the difference between winter and summer 
is a matter of atmosphere. The streams were all 
locked beneath their walls of ice, the hills were 
sombre, the forests sere; but after a few weeks, 
the streams took up their springtime melody, the 
hills were "with verdure clad" and field and for- 
est were beautiful and brilliant with life itself. 
And the difference was a matter of atmosphere. 
Allied with this is the power of place. The poets 
of Greece were born, for the most part, where "the 
mountains look on Marathon and Marathon looks 
on the sea." Most of the poets of England were 
reared there where the sky bends with such ten- 
derness over the earth and reflects itself in the 
lakes that are set like mirrors in the framework 
of hill and mountain. Our own poets, as a rule, 
came from where the mountains lifted them to a 
purer air and a broader view, or where the sea is 
ever "rolling its profound, eternal base through 
nature's anthem," or breathing upon them like an 
inspiring spirit. The atmosphere exhaled from 
the boy's home, should contain love and wisdom 
and authority, so blended as to make it pure like 
that which billows around the throne of God. 
His atmosphere is not only unchosen by him but 
he seldom chooses his companions or teachers, 
they are thrust upon him. Sometimes those in 
authority try to thrust his profession upon him; 



PAST AND FUTUEE 49 

they even attempt the daring sacrilege of select- 
ing a wife for him. 

We may know his past, personal and ancestral, 
but no one knows his future. His relation to his 
past is one of approvals, or repudiations. He has 
the power to turn against an unfortunate heredity 
and environment; he has the power to choose all 
that is noble in the past and present, and his fu- 
ture is largely shaped by his attitude toward his 
past. But nobody knows just what he will do 
with it all till after he has done it. He is the most 
uncertain of creatures. You can never tell his 
future from the way he looks and acts nor from 
the way his ancestors looked and acted. You can 
tell how a fox or a bee or a mule will turn out, but 
not a boy. He is related to the dust beneath his 
feet, to the stars aflame in the sky, to human life 
in all its phases of good and ill, in all its history, 
past, present and to come, to the God above who 
made him ; and just how he turns out will depend 
on how he gets himself related to this multiform 
environment of his. He has the divine gift of 
choice, but no one can forecast or force it. He 
was made that he might become perfect; will he 
even care enough about it to try the stupendous 
task? He has the power of imagination to pic- 
ture; will to purpose and perform; imitation to 
conform to the highest; capacity to receive new 
force and to use the greatest power of all, per- 
sonal force. He has kindred and friends who love 



50 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

him enough to supply him with what he needs. He 
must determine his future and they often decide 
what he will determine. His unchosen factors 
may be bad, but he may choose a new environment 
and a heavenly ancestry, provided he is rightly 
aided. 



VIII 

HIS ILLS AND EPOCHS 

Mumps and bumps, ills and epochs, await him. 
The first mentioned is only one of many diseases 
disputing his path or dogging his unsuspecting 
footsteps. Millions of microbes infest the air and 
certain squads seem to be detailed to concentrate 
on him — the microbes of mumps and measles and 
chicken pox and whooping cough. They are on 
his trail and he receives them all with juvenile hos- 
pitality, or escapes through the vigilance of sleep- 
less guardians and through no precaution of his 
own. Beginning with colic and croup, he loves to 
range the whole gamut of pathological possibili- 
ties till he can stand on the summit of an immunity 
which they no longer dare invade. 

But if some of his ills are preventable, his 
epochs are experiences from which no vigilance of 
parents, or physicians, or teachers can protect 
him. Every psychologist in our country and in 
foreign countries has said so. Older people know 
it from experience. These entertainments along 
the way have been prepared for him and the invi- 
tation to him is mandatory. 

Each of those epochs is a time when some new 
power awakes in him, or develops signally, or en- 

51 



52 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

ters on a phase of special activity. He is never 
the same afterwards. Over the falls his life 
widens out and sometimes deepens; then come 
other falls and others still, till at last, he is out on 
the broad sea, where the currents of life are in 
great oceanic movements. Perhaps, in the future, 
we shall be able to prevent a majority of the dis- 
eases that now seem inevitable, but we can't keep 
him from his epochs. 

He never knows about them in advance, doesn't 
know them when they come, doesn't know they 
have come. He only knows he wants to do and to 
have certain things. It would be difficult to give 
him any idea of their real meaning. We know 
them ; we read, in every look and tone of his, that 
he is passing through the rapids; we know what 
those desires and expectations of his mean. He 
looks forward to the time when he can wear long 
trousers, play the fiddle, drive an auto, have a gun, 
shave and wear whiskers, and sing bass, or tenor, 
and even marry. If he knew everything that was 
to happen to him, he might drop out of the enter- 
prise before he has time to win. 

Now let us try to get an idea of each of his 
epochs and see just what it means ; this we can do 
by studying him and by harking back to our own 
boyhood days for verification. 

Three general periods are clearly distinguish- 
able — infancy, from birth to six; childhood, from 
six to twelve ; adolescence, from twelve to twenty- 
two, or maturity. Then there are little turning 



HIS ILLS AND EPOCHS 53 

points within these periods, so that we can say 
there are, at least, seven stages on his road to 
manhood. Their bounds can be fixed only in a 
general way, for we know that one boy may be 
seven or eight years in reaching the six-year 
stage, while another may reach it in five years. 
Let us look at it more in detail. 

First — Babyhood proper, from birth to three 
years. Several clear marks are discernible 
through this period. Every action is automatic, 
at first. Senses gradually connect up with the 
outside world; sights and sounds and odours at 
last are identified. Imitation becomes the reg- 
nant law; the babe smiles and laughs and frowns 
in answer to your smiles and laughter and frowns. 
He is impatient, or loving, as you are. He does it 
automatically and you furnish the idea. Be care- 
ful. It is a golden period with him. Play is his 
chief diversion, but it is automatic and self-cen- 
tred. Give him play; give him something worth 
imitating. Control of him is necessary, but it is 
not difficult ; it is really control of yourself. 

Second — Infancy, from three to six or seven. 
Along about seven, he is gliding over the first 
falls, but, unless he is told, he will not know what 
it is, perhaps not till he goes off to college and 
studies psychology. Imitation is still the chief 
law of his life, play his chief employment. Play 
has become more voluntary. He likes other chil- 
dren chiefly because he can play with them. By 
and by, he will play with them because he likes 



54 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

them. The dramatic expression of himself in play 
is normal. He acts the part of another with un- 
conscious success. He prefers to imitate 
grown-up men, especially men of might and dar- 
ing. Without hesitation, he takes the part of a 
soldier, even at that early day, though not lacking 
in valorous discretion. "When I'm a man I'm 
going to be a soldier, Mother," said Tommie. 
"What, and be killed by the enemy?" she asked. 
"Oh, well, I guess I'll be the enemy," was his dis- 
creet decision. During these years he has the 
same two needs, at a different stage of their 
growth, plenty of play and something worth imi- 
tating, that something a person. 

These six years are the period of greatest ac- 
tivity, due to rapid expansion of his physical life 
and his gradual discovery of the world into which 
he has come. The result of all this physical and 
emotional action is a set of habits and they will 
be good habits, if he is fortunate in his family and 
friends. 

Third — Early Childhood, from six to about 
nine. He has just finished the period of the great- 
est physical activity of his whole life and is at 
the absorptive period. He absorbs food and 
love and ideas. Play gets to be team work, be- 
cause he is nearing the social era. Conscience 
becomes more self-acting and he wants to be his 
own keeper. Imagination has been at work all the 
time, creative imagination, seeing things that are 
yet to be and building a dream life for himself. As 



HIS ILLS AND EPOCHS 55 

well as I can remember, from my own experience, 
and can judge from a certain boy whom I know 
quite well, I think the image-making power comes 
on the field of action in infancy and becomes very 
active in the period we are now considering. Mem- 
ory starts on its most active career at ten. By 
the time he reaches the next crisis he will be ready 
for it, provided he has plenty of wholesome food, 
frolic and fun, is not embittered by mistreatment, 
or confused by wrong teaching; and, also, pro- 
vided he has been made to see that the bad in him- 
self is to be condemned and repudiated as if it 
were in someone else. Make him play according 
to rule, let him not hear nor see anything that his 
imagination may use in the construction of an un- 
chaste or selfish picture. Keep the memory free 
from the material that will produce bitterness. 

Fourth — Later Childhood, from nine to twelve. 
That is the time when his perceptions are keenest. 
He likes to get away from the house. Play be- 
comes team work. The image-making power is 
very active then. It is what may be called the 
visual imagination. He needs stories, but needs 
contact with nature more than he needs stories. 
Dr. Hall truly says that "our urbanised, hot-house 
life tends to ripen everything before its time." 
We must give him room, out-doors and in-doors. 
Motor exercise is what he needs, regular, active 
and under good control. He needs a higher au- 
thority over him, definite and positive, authority 
and not argument. Plenty of hearty play, clean 



56 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

fun and a good ideal living before him will make 
this a good epoch. 

Fifth — Early Adolescence, from twelve to six- 
teen. The social nature awakes, he becomes con- 
scious of relationships. Hidden powers and pro- 
pensities come into his consciousness; will power 
and judgment get into action together. Latent 
impulses are released. Eeligious feelings become 
acute. It is the beginning of the sex life, in its 
ultimate stages. His physical growth corre- 
sponds to the growth in his mental and moral na- 
ture. His expansion is by a series of explosions 
that seem to have no connection with each other. 
The social instincts are not only awake, but they 
express themselves in ways that surprise him, as 
well as others. When a new power is released it 
comes with a phiz and a bang. 

He is apt to throw up the bony framework and 
then build in, as they do in building a sky-scraper. 
He grows by jerks. He goes off on a summer 
visit and comes back a man. Eobert Burdette, re- 
turning home from a trip in company with his son, 
said the cars ran so slowly he was afraid the boy 
would be grown before he could get him home. 
He is arming himself for the fray, at twelve 
and thirteen — acquiring new strength in back, leg, 
hip, shoulder, jaw, skull and thorax. He 
is vivacious. His nerves are unstable. He 
is awkward, because the bones have outgrown 
the muscles and the latter have not got them 
under control. Nutrition may be defective and 



HIS ILLS AND EPOCHS 57 

cause bad health and a bad disposition. He 
does not know how to express himself. He hun- 
gers for love and appreciation, but doesn't know 
how to receive it. He gets out of himself toward 
others. His intellect becomes inquisitive; he is 
becoming a member of the race. He begins to 
wonder if he will ever have a moustache and he 
shaves and scrapes for it. He aspires to sing 
bass. He begins to think that perhaps, after all, 
girls are not a nuisance. He does team work at 
play. He uses slang. Through these stages he 
appreciates all the kindly attention you can show 
him. You can draw him by his heart strings when 
you can't draw him by a halter; you can lead him 
by his conscience better than by the collar. The 
hand of love can guide the new wild impulses that 
have come into action, impulses which, unguided, 
may sweep him a wreck upon the rocks. 

His self-consciousness is more or less confused. 
It is the time when he is neither a boy nor a man ; 
he is an anomaly. He has come to the place 
where, as if he were a cable car, Nature says, "Let 
go" and again "Take hold," but he holds on when 
he should "let go" and loses his hold intermit- 
tently, when he should "take hold," firmly. His 
hands know no repose, because he is not accus- 
tomed to so much of them. His voice can croak 
like a frog, chirp like a cricket and sing like an 
angel, all in the same breath. One minute it goes 
rumbling down into the depths of the earth as a 
bass, the next it goes up clear out of sight as a 



58 THAT BOY OP YOUES 

tenor. And when lie smiles lie seems to be trying 
to work up some fresh cuticle that has grown upon 
his face since the day before; if he succeeds in 
working it all up he doesn't know what to do with 
it; he looks as if he would like to swallow the 
thing. But it is a fetching smile; you always 
smile back at him and you are apt to say, in after 
days, "His bright smile haunts me still/* 

He is not an unalloyed comfort to the home ; and 
I am informed, on good authority, there was a time 
like that, in our home, some years ago. He talks 
through his nose, he wears out his pants, just 
exactly where you don't want him to wear them 
out. If his older sister is engaged to be mar- 
ried, he keeps her in a state of pectoral pertur- 
bation. 

That may partially explain the antipathy which 
a friend of mine says one of his grandfathers had 
for him when he was a boy. His Grandfather 
Stone loved Fred and thought he was the greatest 
thing that ever happened, and when the lad came 
to see him gave him the freedom of the farm. His 
Grandfather Brooks thought Fred was an inex- 
cusable impertinence and when the lad came out to 
the farm, put all kinds of limitations on his goings 
— wouldn't even allow him to climb up in the apple 
tree and eat green apples, in the leafy month of 
June. Think of it! Fred says, "They were both 
good men, have both died and have gone to heaven 
and when the time comes for me to go, too, one of 
the first persons I shall want to see is Grandfather 



HIS ILLS AND EPOCHS 59 

Stone; but, if Grandfather Brooks ever sees me, 
he'll simply have to hunt me up." 

At this curious stage all inharmonious and 
evil elements seem to battle for his possession; 
you wonder whether he is to become a savage or a 
seer, a bandit or a knight-errant, called to gallant 
endeavour, in behalf of the unfortunate. 

Sixth — Maturing Adolescence, from sixteen on. 
The brain is full grown. Intellect takes control. 
Emotions are restless. Doubts of all kinds have 
their day. He perceives personal relations and 
they are becoming fixed. After each upheaval, 
life becomes more related and reliable. He has a 
saving hold on everybody 's sympathy. He needs 
a friend who has had a similar experience and has 
not forgotten it, and that friend ought to be his 
father. To be his boy's friend is that father's 
main business in life, just at that time. He must 
relate his boy's explosions to each other and to the 
main purposes and interests of life, be worthy 
of his completest confidence and, instead of giv- 
ing him lectures on how to do, give him a life that 
does it 



IX 

HIS SPORTS 

He is a prodigious toiler — at play. As a toiler 
he is also at times a terror. Davie lived, as a lad, 
in southern California. One time his father sent 
him to spend a while with the lad's uncle in north- 
ern California, because, down there, they were ex- 
pecting an unexpected visit — to use a Hibernicism 
— from an earthquake and wanted the most pre- 
cious things out of the reach of harm. The next 
week came a telegram from uncle saying : i ' Come 
and get your boy and send me the earthquake." 
And yet he was just playing. It was pure fun, not 
a bit of meanness in it. In truth, his sports are 
the most serious things in his early life ; the fun- 
nier and louder they are the more serious. They 
rank with the solemnities and, if they are at all 
what they ought to be, their value is beyond calcu- 
lation. 

A boy's sports are different from a girl's or a 
man's. The one thing he must have, from his 
early days till he is permanently settled in life, is 
play — and then more play. Many men get unset- 
tled again for lack of the playful, in one form or 
another. 

Physically, he is adapted to sport and devel- 

60 



HIS SPORTS 61 

oped by it. His growing muscles and bones and 
his unstable nervous system require play. He has 
several million neurons already and each one is 
jumping — all of them in different directions. 
1 ' Can 't you keep still ? ' 9 asks the impatient mother, 
when she ought to know that he cannot. He is 
manufacturing energy so fast it must be taken 
care of and play is the very way nature has de- 
vised for that. Play gives each muscle and neu- 
ron a chance, and trains them all to work together. 
Nature tells him to turn everything into play, and 
he is always glad to do anything that can be thrown 
into that form of activity. It does not always 
mean fun. It may be dramatic and entirely seri- 
ous ; but still it is play. No boy can pass by an 
automobile when its owner is absent, without 
squeezing the honk bulb. It is the ever active 
spirit of sport that prompts it. 

The noise with which he conducts his sports has 
the same element of value. If boys had to play 
without noise they would die of tuberculosis. The 
lion roars when he is hungry; so does a boy. But 
the boy has the lion beaten, for he yells in sheer 
good humour, as the birds sing. The noise is no 
more disorderly or unnatural than the hum of ma- 
chinery manufacturing gum-shoes. The loudness 
of his activities is wholesome. The neurons in his 
lungs need exercise as well as those in his legs. 

It is not for a moment claimed by him, or by 
any one of his anxious friends, that play is not 
hard work. Digging post holes, or worming to- 



62 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

bacco, or carrying a hod, or feeding a threshing 
machine, or driving oxen, or selling goods from a 
bargain counter, is light and lithesome work as 
compared with the labour of a lad at play. That 
is where most of the fun comes from. If he could 
be induced to put that amount of physical activity 
and mental absorption and emotional rapture and 
undefiled conscience into some well-planned enter- 
prise he could achieve wonders and make fortunes. 
But there would be no fun in that, and, besides, it 
would require him to give up his job of being a 
boy. 

His growing muscles and bones and his unstable 
nerves give us the only form of perpetual motion 
that students of mechanics can, as yet, point to 
with confidence. Play is the particular outlet that 
nature arranged for in advance; and in order to 
make sure that he would utilise it, he was given 
the play instinct, self-operative and irrepressible, 
so that it is play or perish. We can easily see, 
then, that the more work required in play the more 
nature is succeeding with her fine scheme of giv- 
ing his energies plenty to do, and the boy gets all 
the benefit of it. Going fishing is no sinecure, 
what with cutting poles and digging bait and climb- 
ing over banks and wading into the water at criti- 
cal moments and carrying home the heavy catch 
of — colds and explanations. Mowing the yard is 
nothing to it, but that is undisguised work. 

If, as has been said, going to school and work 
generally are the prose of his life and play is its 



HIS SPOETS 63 

poetry, play with his own crowd is the dramatic 
poetry, play with his opponents the epic and play 
with his sweetheart is the lyric. But perhaps he 
is not interested in this analysis. With his 5,000,- 
000 cells all jumping he is finding poetry in explor- 
ing woods and caves, digging for hidden treasure, 
living a few days in a tent, going nutting, climb- 
ing trees in order to survey the country and to 
hasten the coming of new trousers, collecting speci- 
mens, coasting, skating and playing the regulation 
games. There is a fine poetic touch in the way 
he makes preparations for play and when that is 
done at inappropriate times and places it is often 
as good as the play itself. 

Yet the chief value of play is not physical; it is 
mental and ethical and social and emotional. It 
shows what is in a boy ; helps to correct him ; then 
discovers great truths and principles to him. 
Froebel says: "The plays of children are germi- 
nal leaves of all later life. ' ' A newspaper re- 
ported the case of a boy sent to the penitentiary at 
sixteen, and added, "He might have been saved 
rom that career if he had been helped in his play. ' ' 
"Because he had no playground" can be truly 
given as the explanation of many a life of crime. 

He expresses all of himself in play. The psy- 
chical as well as physical seeks that form of ex- 
pression. His emotions are first manifested in 
food-getting; next in play. His whole mind gets 
into it. Imitation and imagination; reason and 
religion ; love and hate ; courage and comradeship 



64 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

■ — all are there. From seven to thirteen he learns 
to co-ordinate motion and emotion. 

He learns law, not alone the laws of the game, 
but the great law of cause and effect. He learns, 
perforce, to respect the rights of others. Team 
work establishes social fellowship. He learns to 
accept defeat cheerfully and get ready for the next 
opportunity. A young man decided he wanted to 
go to Princeton when he saw the victorious way 
the college eleven accepted defeat at the hands of 
the Yale football team. 

Defeats are turned into achievements and ob- 
stacles into opportunities, by such a spirit. The 
skill which the game requires he always acquires, 
training all his powers to help each other like 
soldiers in a well-drilled army. Here, then, are 
three great qualities disciplined by his sports — 
fairness, pluck and skill. Into the gaining of 
them go self-control, especially the control of the 
temper, defiance of temptation, the altruistic sen- 
timents of comradeship, self-confidence, and 
obedience to authoritative leadership. 

Play may be artistic in itself and may promote 
the various art aptitudes of boys; music, clay- 
moulding, building snow men, houses and fortifi- 
cations, playing warfare — all have their construct- 
ive value. 

Play develops his muscles first; next, his skill; 
from twelve on, it trains the will power and the 
social sentiments. Nature has graded the school 
just right. As the spirit of comradeship rises in 



HIS SPORTS 65 

him, he enjoys his fellow players as well as the 
play itself, sometimes more. 

Both play and talk are natural and pleasing to 
him, while work and conversation are artificial 
and irksome. Skill in both has to be acquired 
and sometimes he never succeeds in completely 
mastering them. But he learns them both easily 
and eagerly when they can be put into the form 
of play. Most boyhood tasks can be dramatised. 
Trimming the lawn or cutting wood, or carrying 
in coal, can be made competitive and thereby play- 
ful. History can be dramatised, especially where 
it involves war and heroic adventure. Imperson- 
ating Indians, or any other attractive characters, 
is always a pleasure to him. He can like what 
he can play. He plays teacher, doctor, preacher, 
cowboy, robber, stage-driver, with great success. 

Apparently he is learning mostly how to 
wrangle and yell and charge his opponents with 
being unfair, and is cultivating a narrow, class 
spirit, as fast as possible. But something very 
encouraging is going on. He is learning loyalty, 
not to himself alone, but to his cause, and each 
year his cause is growing larger, till, by and by, 
he will identify himself with the cause of man as 
such, and he will be loyal. Obedience to the laws 
of the game is embryo obedience to the laws of 
the state and the laws of life. 

It is even claimed that the aesthetic and artistic 
sense is developed in play. Play is constructive 
unless it is brutal. Progress is sometimes an anti- 



66 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

climax — quarterback, halfback, fullback, hunch- 
back, the latter for life. But grace and rhythm of 
motion, balance and proportion of schemes, cour- 
tesy and kindness in team work — these can grow 
out of well-played games. In these games, con- 
structed for the times, he is growing out of the 
crude into the arts of civilisation. 

Luther Gulick says that children seldom play 
games spontaneously before they are seven, their 
sports being under leaders ; from seven to twelve 
each is for himself and against the rest; after 
that, it is team work and out of doors. "The 
plays of adolescence are socialistic, demanding the 
heathen virtues of courage, endurance, self-con- 
trol, bravery, loyalty, enthusiasm." 

To his parents or guardians : 

1. Co-operate with nature in letting him play 
all he can and co-operate with him in the play 
itself, so far as possible. 

2. Give the play instinct expression in sports 
that develop cleanness, comradeship, courage and 
conscience. 

3. Turn the play into service, by turning service 
into play. 

4. Find his special aptitudes and let him follow 
that line toward his vocation. See that the plays 
are increasingly intellectual and social. We are 
developing a large number of winter sports. 
There is room for originality in the development 
of plays, especially in the home and for the win- 
ter evenings. 






HIS SPOETS 67 

A closing word must be said about the responsi- 
bility of the public, especially in the cities, in pro- 
viding suitable playgrounds for children and 
carefully supervising them. It is the best pre- 
ventative of crime, next to the public schools, the 
city can use. Plays should no more be commer- 
cialised than home or religion or schools. It is a 
good preventive of casualties. We have statis- 
tics and reason for the assertion that public bath- 
ing beaches and playgrounds decrease death by 
accident. This does not relieve the home of a 
similar responsibility. Parlour furniture and 
costly dishes can never serve as good a purpose 
as some apparatus or arrangement for physical 
culture and play; nor can any of these be so val- 
uable as life on a farm. Jane Addams says the 
stupid experiment of organising and failing to 
organise play brings fine revenge of injury to the 
civic and personal life, while well-directed play is 
a development in both directions. 



HIS EMPLOYMENTS 

His sports form one kind of exercise, but they 
are not just the kind of employment I have in 
mind. Some of his employments he turns into 
sports, some of the time; but usually they are 
work, nothing but work. 

There are three reasons why he must have em- 
ployment, both regular and special. One is that 
he gets discipline by it; in industry, in skill by 
the adaptation of means to ends, in forethought, 
in continuity and in self-mastery. Again, that is 
the way he is getting ready for his career, for 
those are the very qualities he must have when 
he gets out into his life work; and he must get 
them started as habits, at the habit-making time 
of his life. Two things will always be required 
of him — character and efficiency; and he is get- 
ting a large part of them by means of his work. 
The third reason is that his services are indis- 
pensable to others, especially in the home, even 
though his parents are rich enough to hire every- 
thing they want done. A servant cannot put the 
spirit of a son into his work. A child can be a 
partner. Yet the work he does is more important 
to him than to all the rest of the family. 

68 






HIS EMPLOYMENTS 69 

We should distinguish two groups of employ- 
ments — those that are assigned to him by his eld- 
ers and those that he initiates and carries on 
himself; both are valuable beyond the power of 
definitions to express. 

Hardships and obstacles are a distinct advan- 
tage to him. Two mistakes are often made. On 
the one hand so much may be done for him and so 
little done through him and in partnership with 
him that he may grow up without any sense of 
responsibility to anybody for anything; on the 
other hand, so little interest may be taken in what 
he is compelled to do that his work may seem en- 
tirely unrelated to his own interests. 

In most of our modern homes there seems very 
little left for a boy to do. The chores are done 
by machinery. Happy for him if he can bring 
in the kindling, or fuel, or start the fire, or take 
care of the furnace, or carry out ashes. If there 
are no sisters in the home to make the beds and 
sweep the floor and set the table and wash the 
dishes, he can take over those jobs, although they 
are not exactly in his line. Also happy for him, 
if he can take care of the lawn and help in the 
garden. The manual training school opens up 
possibilities in the line of artisanship and there 
he can follow his aptitudes. And speaking of 
manual training, let us not forget the part that 
manual labour has in human life. The hand shows 
the abysmal difference between human and ani- 
mal life. Dr. G. Stanley Hall says he found in 



70 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

the United States census reports between three 
and four hundred occupations, more than half of 
which require manual labour. Each tool develops 
its own kind of skill and symmetry. Pestalozzi 
was right in saying, "No knowledge without 
skill." 

Perhaps the boy can assist his father on the 
typewriter, or with his books, or in the office. Of 
course, if he lives in the country, where every boy 
ought to be brought up, he has limitless oppor- 
tunities for regular employment. He can feed the 
cows and drive them up and milk them, and work 
in the garden, and plough and help put in the crop 
and harvest it. His tasks may be varied with 
playing and hunting and fishing and going to the 
store and to the neighbours on errands. The 
horseback work on the farm always suits his 
tastes and talents. 

He can turn the grindstone and salt the cows 
and wait on everybody who feels the need of his 
humble services, from his parents and older broth- 
ers and sisters to the servant girl and the hired 
hand. One boy I have heard of didn't want to go 
to the country because he heard they had thrash- 
ing machines there and it was hard enough for 
him when the thrashing was done by hand. 

Three characteristics of his work are essential. 
It must be regular and definite. Even if it is a 
medley of disconnected chores, each must have its 
own place in the day's schedule, that he may grow 
in the virtues of system and order. 



HIS EMPLOYMENTS 71 

His work must also be congenial, as far as it is 
possible to make it so. His aptitudes are to be 
studied and considered. We know how much de- 
pends on that. As far as it can be made so, his 
work should be in the lines of his future calling 
and career. Handel's father wanted to make a 
lawyer of him and would not allow him to do some 
things that his tastes and his talents fitted him to 
do. Michael Angelo's father wanted to put him 
in a government position. They tried to keep 
Watt from watching the tea kettle boil and to 
make him do practical things. He was willing to 
help around the house, if they would only allow 
him to study the steaming kettle part of the 
time. 

While the ideal of all work is that it shall be so 
congenial that one will always delight in it, some- 
times it is sure to become irksome. Those for 
whom he works, or the aim he has in working, must 
so excite his interest that he is glad to do even 
disagreeable things. And even then he is not an 
angel. 

To some extent his work ought to have material 
remuneration. Often he wants no more than the 
pleasure of helping and the appreciation he de- 
serves. Those two rewards must never fail to 
come. If there is no form of interest he can take 
in his work, it will become only eye-service. He 
will be at cross purposes with duty. Co-operative 
partnership is most congenial to him. It appeals 
to his self-respect, enlightens him about values 



72 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

and needs, and gives him an unselfish interest in 
others besides himself. 

It is of the highest importance that he receive 
some of the rewards in order to gratify and train 
his sense of ownership and responsibility, to sat- 
isfy his sense of right and to secure the uncoerced 
co-operation of his will. The sharing may be in 
indirect ways. Even if his part goes back into the 
common fund for the support of the family, he is 
usually willing, provided he can have the pleasure 
of being in the combine, and can retain his sense 
of freedom. 

His ownership of his earnings is to be recog- 
nised, even though he is not to be left without in- 
structions as to the way he should handle them. 
Habits of thrift must be taught both in the work 
done and in the care taken of his possessions. 

The other group of enterprises is what he initi- 
ates, himself, though often with the assistance of 
other boys. The boy who is not given encourage- 
ment to try his talents in that way is denied his 
birthright. 

To be sure his first business transactions are 
chiefly aerial and he deals in atmospheric values 
of a very warm temperature. He seldom becomes 
what, at first, he wants to become, for he can't get 
all his arrangements made for that till he has tried 
something else for awhile, and while he is doing 
that, he forgets what it was he wanted to become. 

He is almost certain to want to be a street car 
conductor, or a circus rider, or a pony express- 



HIS EMPLOYMENTS 73 

man, or a pot hunter, or a whale catcher, or an 
insect catcher for the Smithsonian, or a gold hun- 
ter, or a soldier. He is not especially brave, in 
fact, is seldom so; but he likes the banners and 
the buttons and the stripes and the guns, for the 
pomp and the appearance of it all. Incidentally, 
he would not mind being a taxidermist, or a dog 
fancier, or a cowboy. He is certain to be stage- 
struck, at an early day. I was, but it was a four 
horse stage, that struck my admiration. Gather- 
ing and selling berries, peddling apples, running 
on errands for a store — these are his common- 
place employments. 

The amount of enjoyment a boy gets out of the 
enterprises he initiates himself is a wholesome 
education; it is an anticipation of his career and 
a preparation for it. He must be encouraged to 
do this, and carefully guided. Guidance is highly 
necessary. When my cousin and I gathered the 
apples that would, otherwise, have gone to waste 
in his father's orchard, and took them down to 
Petersburg and sold some of them and gave one 
half of the gross receipts to the owner of the 
orchard and divided the other half between us, it 
was fine business. But the business reached its 
most fascinating point after we had peddled all 
we could and then would throw them out to the 
crowds of boys to see them scramble and eat. 
And they were gifted at both scrambling and eat- 
ing. The decline of the lightning rod also opened 
to me a little activity which I shall always re- 



74 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

member with pleasure. The old rods on the house 
came down and were turned over to me, together 
with some that once decorated a previous resi- 
dence, and I sold them for a pretty good price to 
Mr. Wooley, down at the blacksmith shop. The 
pleasure of taking that money out of my pocket 
and counting it at least a dozen times a day is a 
sweet memory, even yet. 

Even employment with hobbies is a benefit, as 
it develops special tastes and, sometimes, fits for 
special work in the future. If no other good 
comes from them they are, at least, employments, 
and that is something; but the memory of them 
is sure to be a source of recreative amusement to 
him, in the future. One boy of my acquaintance 
went into the white rabbit industry and actually 
paid expenses, while getting back large returns of 
pleasure and information and sympathy with ani- 
mal life. Another went into photography, while 
a little group, near by, studied wireless telegraphy. 
Drawing, ceramic work, sketching, music — vocal 
and instrumental — have given boys lots of pleas- 
ure and profit. Another makes it pay to raise 
pigs; another, a certain breed of dogs; still an- 
other boy makes a specialty of pigeons. There is 
an enterprising lad who raises vegetables in the 
back yard, on shares, and he sells his half for 
enough to take music lessons on the flute. Boys' 
organisations — gangs and clubs and troops — may 
be given employment by the public and by individ- 
uals. That kind of organisation does double good. 



HIS EMPLOYMENTS 75 

But the note of warning must be sounded. 
Perils await him. Among his interesting ventures 
are those in which his father engages to give him 
financial compensation for services of greater or 
less insignificance. Let both him and his father 
beware lest he learn to put a financial value on 
those ministries which he should render freely and 
gladly, as a son. Let him learn to co-operate for 
the pleasure of doing his part. Let every com- 
mand given him be a summons to his nobler sense 
of comradeship, all work come to be team work 
and all rewards be a gratification to his unselfish- 
ness. 

He is in peril of early pessimism, as he finds 
that everybody feels competent to direct him and 
justified in imposing on him by withholding or 
cutting his wages, working him overtime, and, in 
numberless ways, failing to recognise that a boy 
can get tired, or hungry, or irritated, or indignant. 

But worse than that, the employed boy is in dan- 
ger of hearing profane and obscene talk, and that, 
too, from men whose consciences should blister 
them for the infamy. The man who pours filth 
and profanity into a boy's ear is worthy of severe 
retribution. Yet, at the noon hour and in the 
office, that boy may hear words which make him 
blush and he is often invited to do things that he 
knows his parents would rather see him die than 
do. 

He may be so directed that his early ventures 
will be in the line of his future achievements. It 



76 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

is well for him to have in mind such boys as An- 
drew Carnegie who came over from Scotland 
with only a sovereign in his pockets but with sov- 
ereignty in his soul, and fired a stationary engine 
for two fifty a week. A boy can get the virtues 
of industry, honesty, fairness and altruism started 
and operative in his life quite early. 



XI 

HIS POSSESSIONS 

If ownership of something is essential for a 
man, it is for a boy, as well. It is necessary for 
a man because God has put him in the midst of 
things that are to be owned, has given him a de- 
sire for possession and has distinctly told him to 
subdue and use them. And whenever we find a 
man who has lost all desire for such things, he 
does not take the right kind of interest in them, 
nor feel responsibility, nor get the discipline he 
might through his effort to possess them, unless he 
has some special mission in the world, providen- 
tially appointed, which prevents acquisition of 
property. 

So a boy must begin to have things of his own, 
for he needs training in that, as well as in his 
memory and reasoning and powers of speech. 
Through his memory he owns much ; through lay- 
ing up something, he is providing for the future 
and increasing his present enjoyments and oppor- 
tunities. One can own only what he can know and 
use. The vagrant has nothing to enjoy; the very 
rich own very little of what they have, because 
they cannot enter into it, just as a man can have 

77 



78 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

great supplies of food, but can assimilate only one 
meal at a time. 

A boy must gratify that desire, secure that dis- 
cipline and feel that responsibility, by owning, and 
caring for, and managing something in the line of 
possessions. He must have his own toys, books, 
clothes and articles of usefulness. His pockets 
show his passion for possession, a blind desire, 
working without the power of selection, and the 
result is an aggregation of things entirely useless, 
except to a boy — knife, tops, marbles, bean-shoot- 
ers, beeswax, bullets, buckles, lead, scrap iron, 
slings, fishing worms, chewing gum, licorice, candy, 
pills. There is an age when he is more active in 
such enterprises, but he is doing the same thing he 
does when he amasses wealth. He has a trading 
age, from about eleven to fifteen, when he will 
trade anything he has for anything any other boy 
has — cats and dogs and pigeons and toys and any 
of the stock he carries in his pockets. 

He must not only possess things, but take care 
of them as well. The penalty for not having what 
he can call his own is that he never has anything 
to give to others, is thriftless, selfish, begging, bor- 
rowing and tempted to steal what he would like to 
have. Possessions mean power and thrift is prep- 
aration for peace. He cannot take care of his own 
things unless he has a place for them which is 
his own. That is one of the reasons why a boy 
should have a room, a trunk and all the equip- 
ment with which to take care of his things. That 






HIS POSSESSIONS 79 

is not the only reason he should have a separate 
room, but that alone is enough. 

What has been said about all of this applies es- 
pecially to his money. As he is expected to make 
money and possess it and use it in the future, he 
must begin as a boy, and learn to do it in the 
right way, so as to avoid the wrong way later. 
The very same principles that he is to observe 
then are to be acted upon now, both because they 
are right and because he will not act on them as 
a man, unless he learns to act on them now. How 
is a boy to get money? That is a matter of far- 
reaching importance. He may properly get it in 
two ways — receive it as a gift and earn it. Both 
ways are necessary. It should come in the form 
of an allowance, given freely and regularly. If 
he has to tease and beg for it, he gets no training, 
finds no law of cause and effect and of parental 
forethought, gains no sentiment of partnership 
with parents. If it does not come regularly, in a 
dependable way, he may be tempted to get it in a 
way that is not honest. His conscience does not 
awake as early as his desire for possessions. 

There may be objections to the allowance, as 
there are objections to every way of doing any- 
thing. There is the danger that he will come to 
think of it as his by right, and not as a gift ; and 
he may grow up to lack appreciation of what is 
done for him. But there are always dangers in 
good things, and it is not impossible to safeguard 
him. 



80 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

It must be given in such a way as to keep him 
responsible to his parents. As it comes regularly 
it cultivates in him order and system. A pocket- 
book to keep it in ministers to his pleasure, makes 
him orderly and enables him to save it more easily. 
An account book in which to set down receipts and 
expenditures trains him in the virtue of accuracy. 
Reports to his father each week keep alive the 
sense of responsibility to authority, even for his 
own things. Eequiring him to save a part of each 
week's allowance enables him to accumulate and 
encourages thrift. A small reward for additional 
savings will still further teach him the value of 
money. A rigid refusal to allow him to spend it in 
injurious ways may prevent spendthrift habits. 
Putting a portion of it into a savings bank that 
will pay him interest gives him an idea of busi- 
ness. 

Meeting some of his personal expenses with his 
own money will teach him forethought and self- 
denial. Making some of his own purchases will 
teach him good judgment and self-reliance. By 
the time he is his own man he will have money 
on hand and he will have learned self-denial and 
economy and forethought and patience. 

As soon as he is able to invest his savings in 
property of some kind which will require his care 
or executive skill, he begins to become manly, with 
a sense of responsibility and a wholesome valua- 
tion of himself. 



XII 

HIS SPARE TIME 

A boy has very little spare time, if hie is left to 
arrange his own schedule. In fact, he will not 
find time for everything he wants to dp. And he 
certainly will not have time if he does everything 
he is asked to do. But if a reasonable schedule 
is worked out for him, he will have enough time 
on his hands to follow his own bent and look after 
some of his urgent interests. He will be left to 
his own resources a while each day. That is the 
spare time of which I am especially speaking. 
After awhile he will be in charge of twenty-four 
hours each day, and he is now getting ready for 
that responsibility, by taking over a few hours 
at a time. If he can be helped to make a success 
of them, there is reason to believe that he can 
succeed with the whole twenty-four, by and by. 

Let us take an inventory and see what he has 
on his hands. Count out the time arranged for 
him in the family schedule — hours for eating and 
sleeping and doing the chores about the house and 
yard, or on the farm. Then count out the hours 
of school arranged for by the public. There may 
be a special concession of extra time for extra 
chores and for sleeping, for both of which he is 

81 



82 THAT BOY OF YOUBS 

very grateful. After allowing for all the time 
thus pre-empted, we have quite a margin left — 
some in the morning, a little at noon, more at the 
close of school, still more after the evening meal ; 
and he is to be allowed large liberty in the use 
of it. 

Part of his own time is apt to arrange for itself, 
as he and the other boys drift into their plans 
for play, and no one knows just how it is done. 
They gravitate together at certain times and 
places as naturally as blackbirds flock together 
in the autumn. It is the group that does it, rather 
than any one boy in the group ; it is a composite 
choice, even though suggestions come from indi- 
viduals here and there. 

But I am speaking of the time that is left to 
his own initiative, when he is out of school and 
through with his group plays and his chores, es- 
pecially at the evening hour. Let us say he has 
three hours, more or less each day, which he can 
call his own, — exclusive of the Sundays. That 
would make eighteen hours in six days. In one 
year it would make a great big slice of time for 
which he is more or less responsible. He has no 
time to throw away, but he has enough for very 
large achievements and it is better than if it were 
all crowded together. 

The fact must be faced, that, as he grows older, 
it is the most perilous time of the whole twenty- 
four hours — for three reasons. It is the time of 
the day when temptation to all the forms of dis- 



HIS SPARE TIME 83 

sipation is most bold and brazen and persistent; 
it finds him more relaxed and less on his guard 
especially in the evening than at any other time of 
the day. It is the only time that he can call his 
very own and, in the mere deciding, it gives a new 
responsibility which reacts on his whole nature. 
He shows what it is to him, not so much by the 
way he does the tasks prescribed by another as 
by the way he prescribes his own tasks. 

If he is taught to use it rightly as a boy, his 
destiny is secure. He cannot be coerced, but the 
possibilities may be opened to him in a fascinating 
way by a recital of historic examples. Elihu 
Burritt, the blacksmith, became a learned linguist 
while working at the forge, as did William Carey 
while working as a cobbler and later as a mis- 
sionary. Sir John Lubbock was a banker, but he 
found time at odd moments to become a great 
archeologist ; E. C. Stedman became a man of let- 
ters, though a banker; Mr. Westcott, the banker, 
wrote " David Harum" at odd moments. John 
Locke, the philosopher, did most of his work which 
is of permanent value, while resting from his daily 
toil. Our own Benjamin Franklin used to take 
a book to the table with him, when he was intent 
on some special scientific point. Hugh Miller be- 
came a learned geologist while pursuing his trade 
as a stone mason. But the list is too long to give. 
These are eminent examples but not too eminent 
to be useful. 

Some of the spare time can be spent in play, es- 



84 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

pecially in the twilight when he and the other 
boys get together on the lawn, or in the vacant lot 
across the street, for a wholesome game. The 
long winter evenings give rare opportunities for 
a variety of things. Instructive play is one of 
the best things for him and the other members of 
the family. The play may be dramatic with a 
simple attempt to portray the characters of a 
book. Or the time may be given to alternate read- 
ing in which each one takes a character. For- 
tunate for him if the older members of the family 
are playful as well as serious in their feelings, 
and know how to give direction to the evening's 
enjoyments 'in the form of sympathetic and sen- 
sible advice and co-operation. He is always open 
to that kind of help, for it trains instead of de- 
nying his power of choice to him. The right of 
tactful supervision over all his time must never 
be surrendered. 

When the games and readings are social they 
develop his sense of social responsibility and train 
him in the virtue of sympathy. The more he can 
do for the benefit of others the more he gets out 
of it. If he is fortunate enough to be one of 
several children, he will come to think of the mu- 
tual interests promoted by this use of his spare 
time with more pleasure than of any other feature 
of it. This will be increasingly the case after he 
reaches his teens. 

The evening's programme must not be exhaust- 



HIS SPARE TIME 85 



ing and must not be so exciting as to make him 
dream of being tomahawked or chased by tigers. 
Nor must he be allowed to think he is being driven 
into a grown-people 's programme. This will 
take time. But I don't know any first-class boy 
who is not worth time and all the time there is. 
It will take a great deal of ingenious forethought 
and planning and arranging, but if there is any 
boy worth doing it for it is your boy. 

There are other things besides play that he can 
do in his spare hours. It is a good time for him 
to ride his hobby if he has one, and if he has not 
one it is a good time for him to hunt one up. His 
dominant taste will show itself enough for a wise 
pair of parents to help him find the very one he 
needs. So many things in science and mechanics 
are now brought within the comprehension of chil- 
dren that it will be easy to interest him in some- 
thing that may prove of value to him all the rest 
of his life. He is fortunate if he has a strong 
taste for music and can give some of his evenings 
to that. 

One thing more, and of vast moment : He must 
be taught to minister in an unselfish way to the 
needy, and some of his own time ought to be spent 
that way. If spare moments are the gold dust of 
time for men, they are for boys as well. If men 
ought to practise active benevolence, they can not 
learn to do it well unless they begin when they are 
boys. 



86 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

Through Sunday-school and social organisa- 
tions good methods will be suggested for far- 
reaching ministries to his fellow beings. This will 
not only be a discipline of essential importance, but 
a delight of the highest kind. 



XIII 

HIS LOOKS 

A boy is not always a thing of beauty — not yet. 
The "irrepressible conflict/ ' of which we have 
read and said so much, is the conflict between his 
desire to look well and his disinclination to use 
the measures that tend to insure good looks. A 
presentable appearance is impossible without 
cleanliness, and from that standpoint boys drop 
into three classes. 

First are the few, the precious few, who like to 
use soap and water and scrubbing implements on 
ordinary as well as on state occasions ; but it must 
be conceded that this is almost an invisible, rather 
than an invincible, company of "Knights of the 
Bath." 

The second group must always have high pres- 
sure inducements to avail themselves of bathroom 
facilities. 

The third is the great middle class of boys, who, 
with more or less reluctance, will co-operate in the 
care of their persons. It will be different later on, 
but then they will no longer be boys. Meantime 
the boy's face, hands, finger-nails, neck and ears 
are negligible quantities. There is a time when 
almost any little boy is pre % tty, if cleaned up and 

87 



88 THAT BOY OF YOUBS 

dressed tastefully, and he enjoys being told he is 
pretty; but has no more respect for his looks 
than to play in a mud puddle, if he has a chance 
and is not watched. 

Those who have the care of him find that his 
looks are an element in the boy problem, and his 
looks are, in some degree, a matter of clothes. I 
think we are getting away from the good old days 
when the laws of heredity had charge of the boy's 
clothing department. The second-hand dealer, 
the weary tramp, and the frontier missionary, 
with his seven closely graded boys, have come to 
his aid in relieving him of some of those heirlooms 
to which he used to be the sole heir apparent. 
Still there is a boy here and there living under 
the old dispensation, and there are men in abun- 
dance who once lived the life of pensioners on the 
bounty of preceding generations. Two boys were 
engaged in conversation and one of them said: 
"My daddy has some new teeth that the dentist 
made him." With significant promptness his 
chum asked, "What is he going to do with his old 
ones?" "Oh, I don't know," was the reply; "I 
suppose they'll cut 'em down and make me wear 
'em." 

There comes a time when, even with the best 
of clothes, it is difficult to secure the co-operation 
of his looks in making a desirable impression. He 
would like to be graceful but he can't be. Joseph 
Parker says that when Gladstone smiled it looked 
like sunshine breaking over a crag ; but even Glad- 



HIS LOOKS 89 

stone was not credited with that achievement at 
the age of fourteen. To speak after the manner 
of the scientist, we say that his bones have grown 
faster than his muscles and his mind in its appre- 
ciation of ideal things, of action and form faster 
than either; therefore he cannot handle his mus- 
cles as gracefully as he will do later on. With an 
acuter sense of what he wants to do and less skill 
than is required, he suffers confusion and mortifi- 
cation which makes him still more clumsy. He 
belongs to the awkward squad. He is starting to 
look up. He has been living in his imagination 
and he is taking that same power over into another 
department of the real. He sees a disparity be- 
tween the real and the unreal, especially the phys- 
ical real, and he is clumsy and awkward, moody 
and sometimes melancholy. 

It is true, yet a paradox, that he is at his most 
forbidding and fascinating period at one and the 
same time, and his looks betray him in both re- 
spects. Conceit and humiliation, love and dislike 
are struggling within him. He likes his looks and 
dislikes them. He wants different features, or 
feet, or hands, but he hopes he is really not homely. 

There is a moral value in his looks because they 
react on his disposition and his tendencies; and 
they affect his relations with people whether it is 
desirable they should or not. For that reason 
there is a moral value in clothes ; and it is inter- 
esting to see him awake to their significance when 
that new world in which are all the deathless in- 



90 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

terests of the heart, opens to him. They are in- 
volved in the appearance he makes. Now he de- 
liberately washes behind his ears, shines the heels 
of his shoes even when in a great hurry ; finds that 
a mirror is an indispensable article of furniture 
for his room, gives careful attention to the parting 
of his hair, combs it all the way back, feels humili- 
ated at any little patch on his trousers that is in 
view of his own eyes, and actually blushes at the 
thought of patches around on the other side of him 
which others can see though he may not. 

Those who were children so long ago that they 
treat the whole matter in a cavalier way and say : 
"It is not your clothes, my son, that count but you ; 
pretty is as pretty does," may be right but they 
are just as wrong as they are right for it is only 
half the truth. When there comes a new con- 
sciousness of self there arises a new demand for 
clothes. The new sense of others requires that he 
present himself to them in a satisfactory way. A 
new pride in his own family calls for suitable 
clothes. There are two ways to treat his clothes 
instinct — fight it and bring on a conflict, or 
correct and cultivate it and teach him to do the 
same. 

His features must remain, as a rule, as nature 
made them to grow, but they may be helped out 
with clothes, cleanliness, appropriate decorations 
and the right kind of foods and scientific culture, 
till they reshape themselves and assume manly 
beauty, especially when there is a noble and beau- 



HIS LOOKS 91 

tiful soul residing in the body and using it for high 
purposes. 

Culture in good looks is one of the rights of a 
boy, in order to offset any present disadvantage 
and equip him for future effectiveness. And it 
can be carried on only with his co-operation. But 
therein lies a peril. His vanity, curious thing, is 
capable of puffing him up with conceit and pulling 
him down with dissatisfaction. To work for good 
looks is not bad as a means of self-expression, but 
it is fatal as an end in itself. He will need both 
advice and direction, but they will be most effect- 
ive when incidental. Clothes are to keep him 
warm, absorb or transfer impurities and react on 
his bearing. He must have both dress and ad- 
dress. 

Put on him clothes that do not wound his taste 
nor puff up his pride and he has no artificial load 
to carry. Teach him to dress himself, with due 
regard to comfort and to the sanctity of that sa- 
cred mystery, the body, and you have given him 
some of the deep lessons of life. There is a cul- 
ture in the art of dressing which, first of all, puts 
the man above millinery and then adapts the mil- 
linery to him with a sense of his absolute superi- 
ority. "When the inner spirit is cultivated it 
transfigures the boy and gives him an impressive- 
ness which is without peril. Keep steadily and 
consciously in mind that it is the character you are 
cultivating, through the culture of the charm of 
the outer person, and the latter will be second to 



92 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

the former. When the mind is filled with the sense 
of the true, the beautiful and good, it will react on 
the body to make it conform to the mind ; and the 
culture of the body will be a sacred ministry to 
that sacred temple both of the human and the di- 
vine spirit. 

Great homeliness may be depressing to him, 
while the very handsome boy is tempted to vanity. 
Fortunate for him if he is not so homely that he 
has to think about it and thereby become egoisti- 
cal, and is not so handsome that he becomes ego- 
tistical. 



XIV 

HIS GANG 

Boys like the word "gang." It is the most ac- 
curate word we can use, anyway. Their "gang" 
period begins when they are about eleven, — some- 
times earlier; it continues till thirteen and some- 
times to fourteen or fifteen. 

The social nature is unfolding in new ways and 
they do new things, new even to their forgetful 
fathers, who wonder why boys are such strange 
creatures, and declare they were never like them — 
which, of course, is strictly not true. At this pe- 
riod, boys are compelled to get together for two 
reasons: First, because they are at that age; it 
is in their bones and is burning like fire ; the social 
world has opened to them and they seek their 
social affiliations in the line of their tastes. Sec- 
ond: They get together because their physical 
activities are such that no boy can get all the exer- 
cise he wants without the aid of other boys who 
can assist him in organising his energies into co- 
operative enterprises. He simply cannot bear to 
be left alone. Girls are not in his class. They 
have no charm nor terror for him — not yet. 

They get together by neighbourhoods, as a rule, 
and at the call of someone who is a natural leader 

93 



94 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

and assumes all the functions of a leader with- 
out appointment and without hesitation. There 
is no rotation in office and when the chief goes 
the gang is already gone; it has reached its 
term and expires by natural limitation and the 
boys have no more use for it than for their father's 
old clothes. While the gang lasts it keeps busy. 
What they do when they get together depends on 
several things — how old they are, what kind of a 
leader they have, where they hold their meetings, 
what sort of homes they come from and what in- 
fluences come from older people. If they get 
together just before they emerge from the preda- 
tory, individualistic stage, or if they have a leader 
of a destructive and lawless nature, or if they 
"hang out" in objectionable places, or if they 
come from homes where snarling and nagging, or 
indifference, prevails, or if they are left without 
any appreciative and directive help as a "gang" 
from older people, they are likely to inaugurate 
a torrid temperature for the community and 
achieve widespread and undesirable fame for 
themselves. But they can be gentlemen and can 
emerge from this period with new attainments 
and equipments. 

There are some things necessary. First of 
all they must do things, do them with heads and 
hands and hearts and feet and voices. Do not 
forget the ceaseless accompaniment of sound. 
And all of them must do things and do the same 
things. "All the kids do it," is the conclusive 



HIS GANG 95 

reason for a given deed. The man wlio does 
things is their hero, whether shooting mountain 
lions, or riding a bucking broncho, or playing 
ball, or going as a heroic missionary to the 
heathen. 

Their activities, which may be entirely admis- 
sible, are hunting, fishing and roaming into the 
country; making bonfires and attending fires — 
for, if there is one thing a boy enjoys above an- 
other, it is being promptly on hand at every con- 
flagration and remaining till the last fireman has 
left ; participating in political parades ; attending 
Sunday-school picnics; going on real bona fide 
errands, when the gang spirit is recognised in 
some distinctive way; engaging in any kind of 
well-doing, to which he is led by comradeship 
and not by the collar. Put special regalia on him 
and he will work till he drops. The above list 
does not begin to be complete, as every boy knows ; 
it is suggestive. 

They co-operate in collecting, for they all seem 
to have a collecting mania; not that they care 
very much for the things they collect, but it is the 
collecting itself they like. We may utilise this 
mania and direct them into something perma- 
nently worth while, otherwise they will likely 
acquire an aggregation that would suit only a 
freak show. They make all sorts of social ex- 
periments in caves and old houses, and usually 
have a guardhouse for enemies and insubordi- 
nates. They would care very little for the fea- 



96 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

tures that so attract them in the "Boys* Bri- 
gades, " and "Boy Scouts,' ' if it were not for the 
crowd they can get into. 

They think out a nomenclature which would 
surprise any adult maker of dictionaries. It is 
an era of slang and nicknames. The leader is 
"Judge,' ' or "Doc," or "Cap'n," and every boy 
has a new name that is far beyond the reach of a 
Dickens to invent. Each contributes to the com- 
mon freak fund. This is the era of yells and 
signals and whistles and shyness among stran- 
gers and disinclination to show affection, as such, 
at home or anywhere else. The boy thinks a 
great deal more of his teacher than she imagines 
and he dotes on his daddy and often brags about 
him, but would rather keep him in ignorance of 
it. They don't have to express themselves to 
each other, because they all feel alike and know 
it. Their talent for inventing and pursuing 
games of all kinds seems phenomenal and it is all 
team work. The boy has not lost his individu- 
ality ; he has rather increased it. But he has lost 
a part of his old individualism and is now a part 
of a brotherhood. His life is widening out from 
its birthpoint. 

Some latent qualities of which he was not 
aware, are being released during this period — 
courage and loyalty to others, the spirit of co- 
operation and benevolence and obedience to au- 
thority, and the sense of reality. He learns to 
hate cowardice and the boy who will not "take a 



HIS GANG 97 

dare" is read out of his class at once. That boy 
is a "baby," a "sissy" and "has no sand." Be- 
cause of loyalty and pride they will fight for their 
gang and help the individual members and suffer 
and bleed for the good of the order. Individu- 
ally they are not fond of fighting as a rule, but 
as gangsters they may enjoy it. 

The gang may be good or bad, may turn itself 
into a self -improvement club, or a band of marau- 
ders. Often the boys do not know which way 
they are drifting. If a strong and wise and lov- 
ing hand lays hold of them — and keeps itself in- 
visible most of the time — it may conduct them 
through that period and work transformations. 
Then when the gang is gone and the individuals 
remain, loyalty to a little group will be loyalty to 
the larger group of man as such; friendships 
within the group will grow into the finer friend- 
ships of manhood; courage in the face of per- 
sonal or clan peril will become that doughty 
strength of heart and conscience which will dare to 
do right anywhere and always; the sense of re- 
ality will be the perception of truth; obedience 
to the law of the clan will be reverence for the 
laws of man and God. 

The boys appreciate it if someone comes back 
and down to their level and gets into the gang 
with them, provides some place as good as a good 
home for them, keeps mischief from becoming 
malice and turns energies and impulses into en- 
nobling activities; goes out into the fields and 



98 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

camps with them, into their dens and caves and 
laughs with them, into their meetings and yells 
with them. They like that sort of an older friend 
next to their chief. Jacob Riis says that when his 
wise wife saw that their boys were in a gang she 
joined it herself and got control of it, though they 
never suspected what she was about. It is just 
the time to tether the boy to the biggest and best 
things of life. Even religion can reach him 
through his gang instinct. 



XV 

HIS CHUMS 

It is claimed that the boy's life is an epitome 
of the life of the race. He passes through the 
two stages that the race has passed through and 
when he gets into the third he is there to stay, 
as the race now is. Some wise man has called 
them the stages of dependence, independence and 
interdependence. At first it is dependence. The 
boy cannot walk, or talk, or dress himself — can- 
not even feed himself. The only thing in the 
world he can do is to summon assistance, but he 
is certainly gifted at that. 

He could honestly say, "This one thing I do," 
if he were capable of saying anything. He has 
been fitted out with an appliance for turning in a 
distress call, or a riot call, which is warranted 
to work at all hours, and to work exceptionally 
well in the darkness of the night. For several 
years he is in the strictly dependent state. 

Then there comes a period of independence, not 
in fact but in his feelings. He sometimes thinks 
he would like to run away, though in almost every 
instance in which the running-away cure has been 
tried it has completely cured the runner. From 
that time on, running away is not in his line. 

99 



100 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

By and by he is more or less aware of the in- 
terdependence stage. Two marks of childhood 
are enthusiastic fondness for play and compan- 
ionship. " Mamma, I wish I was two little pup- 
pies, so I could play together," said Joe. Eight 
here his chum steps in. This chum is likely to 
drop out any day and give way to the gang. But 
after the gang days, chumship sets in again and 
has in it the elements of endurance. 

The first stages in the development of the 
boy's social relationship can easily be distin- 
guished. The first is the indiscriminate and per- 
sonal stage, when he scarcely asks who his com- 
panions are, requiring only that they be boys 
and plenty of them, the more the better. To be 
sure, he has his preferences, but he has not yet 
specialised in a decisive and final way. During 
this period, he is apt to be carried by his strong 
team sentiment over into the realm of the oppo- 
site sex and fall furiously in love with some little 
girl. He usually does so each season, or each 
session of school, and he thinks he can't live with- 
out her. This is about the only thing in his boy- 
hood that he cannot turn into play. 

The second stage is from ten to twelve; the 
third, when he is twelve or thirteen; the fourth, 
after the gang is dissolved ; the fifth is more de- 
liberate — it is final, with complexities. 

So we see there are two general chumming 
periods, before and after the gang period, one of 
them fleeting and fussy, the other secretive and 



HIS CHUMS 101 

stable, all connected with the awakening of the 
social instincts, all of them marks of that final 
state of interdependence. First it prompts him 
into a temporary alliance with some boy and he 
keeps away from the girls ; then he gets in with a 
crowd of boys, under the influence of this new 
impulse which leads him to take in a larger section 
of his fellows. 

The moment the girl begins to appear on his 
horizon, he is aware of a new phase of interde- 
pendence ; he drops the gang at once and wants a 
boy chum. Is it for protection or co-operation? 
The boys come out of their gang as the animals 
went into the ark, "two by two." 

In the first stage the friendship, like soda pop, 
comes with a bang and a fizz and they have to 
make the most of it while it lasts. The two use 
the same slang, the same yell, the same tones of 
voice, the same games and, seemingly, the same 
personality. When they have a quarrel and 
make up, the one who was to blame usually treats. 
They acquire a stock of possessions, — bats and 
balls, dogs and cats, and when the partnership is 
dissolved, may act like cats and dogs in determin- 
ing the ownership of the property. 

They switch chums often enough to keep it 
from growing monotonous. Memory recalls the 
time, when, in a little country school one spring- 
time, Will and I would be chums for a few days, 
with deadly hostility towards a small crowd of 
three or four other boys, and a few days later 



102 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

John and I would be tied up together against the 
field. Some way, the more you think of one boy, 
the more you are likely to be in rivalry with the 
other boys. This period soon passes. It seems 
a provisional and preliminary affair. But I have 
known boy chums continue intimate friends for 
life. The reason seems to be that the same two 
boys kept together through the gang period, and 
re-established their intimacy when the gang dis- 
solved. 

It is at the age of fifteen or sixteen that the 
main chum period opens. The clan impulse has 
spent its particular force and given way to an- 
other social impulse, really a double impulse. 
The boy likes his new chum better than he ever 
did like a boy before, and as for girls they are 
the newest thing in angels, just out; and usually 
there is some one girl who certainly must have 
wings attached somewhere to her airy, fairy 
form. 

The confiding instinct brings him and his chum 
together and the pairing instinct directs his gaze 
toward some adorable "she." He wants a chum 
because he is now growing secretive and this is 
the outlet for his heart. He is growing secretive, 
because he is the possessor of newly-awakened 
powers of which he has not yet gained control, 
and he finds that he is connected with people and 
affairs in a new way. He is not yet sure of him- 
self. His chum has made him a chum for the 
same reason and the two understand each other. 



HIS CHUMS 103 

He is a new man in a new world and his chum 
is the same. There never was another like him 
since the world began. When one enters a new 
world it is like trying to live in a vacuum unless 
he finds someone there ; that one is his chum and 
happy for him if he finds some of the older folk 
lingering there. 

The things they talk about are the things that 
belong to that age — sports, of course, and what 
they intend to become, and their plans, and — 
girls. That great day has dawned. Some new 
powers are getting in command. Memory is no 
longer lonesome. Imagination is actively at 
work. The rational and deliberative faculties 
are in the field. Sentiment hangs halos over the 
outlying future. 

Sentiments crystallise into character very rap- 
idly. You look into his eyes this morning and 
you see your boy no more, you see a young man. 
His chum will put some finishing touches on his 
character. The mightiest influence of this period 
may come from that chum to blight or bless him 
forever. Even if they go off to different colleges, 
or separate for different parts of the world, they 
will likely cherish the chum feeling for each 
other all of their lives. He who deftly guides 
him in the selection of his chum is his benefactor. 
The boy must really have two chums and the 
other must be — his father. But that is a story by 
itself. 



XVI 

HIS HEROES 

A boy is a born hero worshipper. That is one 
way he earns his passage from little to much. 
Nature starts him out with a talent for admiring 
and that is coupled with the talent for imitating. 
The rest of the story tells itself. He grows like 
that upon which he keeps his admiring gaze. The 
first thing he admires is physical power, for the 
first thing he needs is physical resources. One 
boy when asked who was the first man he wanted 
to see when he went to heaven, instantly replied, 
"Goliar." Goliath was the only thing big 
enough for him. The next after the physical is 
the emotional; then come the intellectual, the 
ethical and the religious. These are the unmis- 
takable stages, though he may be in all three at 
once. 

His principles are in the form of persons ; his 
rules are in his rulers. He never cares for 
truth in the abstract ; he wants it in the concrete. 
He has his heroes from the time he starts till he 
is old enough to be one himself ; and he is capable 
of it, or he could not appreciate heroism in 
others. Discovering and worshipping his he- 
roes is one of the most fascinating things he even 

104 



HIS HEROES 105 

does ; and one of the most wholesome, if they are 
of the right kind. He is furnishing very inter- 
esting instruction to those who have the over- 
sight of his life, for he is showing what is in him, 
what he is capable of becoming, and how the 
process is already going on. 

You can judge a boy by the man he admires. 
You can gauge his possibilities at a given stage, 
by the things he appreciates. You can guide him 
in the course you want him to take by the inter- 
est he takes in those who are going that way. 

His first heroes are always men of marked 
physical prowess, yet they always have an influ- 
ence on his ethical nature, for better or worse. 
He is almost as apt to find bad heroes as good, 
unless he is given some assistance. The place 
of homage is to be pre-empted by his father, or 
his older brother, or someone near at hand, for 
good; and the one who holds that place has to 
do something and be busy at it all the time. It 
ought not to be difficult to keep before him ex- 
amples of prowess that are ethically worthy of 
his adoration. There are plenty of them in lit- 
erature; plenty in real life. To be sure he may 
find special fascination in the swaggering, bully- 
ing fellow whose talk is bestial and degrading, 
and against such he has to be safeguarded. 

One of the ecstatic moments of my early life 
was one Sunday morning down at old Bullitts- 
burg church, as a group of us boys and men 
were out under the trees waiting for services to 



106 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

begin. I was only nine years old. Tom Hogan 
and several other young men came riding up. 
Tom was on a grey horse. Just as that grey 
horse got to the proper place he began a series 
of demonstrations that simply raised me to an 
ecstasy. He reared up on his hind legs and 
started to walk off like a man. Then he de- 
scended, touched base and repeated the act. This 
he did again and again. Tom acted as if he had 
been brought up on the horse's back; in fact 
there seemed a quiet sympathy between the two. 
When the horse at last decided to take up per- 
manent residence on the ground and consented 
to be hitched to a tree and the gallant rider joined 
our group, I walked around him and gazed at him 
as at a prodigy, and listened to him as to an or- 
acle. 

But the boy likes the highly ethical best of all, 
if it is in the form of noble prowess and chival- 
rous knight errantry, provided his tastes have 
not already been perverted. He comes to a time 
when he adores intellect, especially as it takes the 
form of shrewdness and skill and enables phys- 
ical weakness to triumph over brute force, as when 
"Br'er Rabbit" outwits the larger and stronger 
animals or the meek-looking stranger suddenly 
overpowers the bully by his superior intellect and 
skill. 

It takes him some time to be able to see the 
hero in the pure intellectual worker, especially 
one of a certain type who prepares his precious 



HIS HEKOES 107 

manuscript on a recondite subject and, when the 
dog tears it up and the maid throws the scraps in 
the fire, merely says, "Tut! tut!" in a falsetto 
voice. But he likes the prowess of intellect, par- 
ticularly when it discovers radium, constructs 
steamships, writes great stories and governs peo- 
ple. There must be personality behind the in- 
tellect. He knows who is the intellectual master 
in any combat and knows how to admire him. 

There comes a time when he has reverence for 
the man who stands for a moral principle, or 
makes known truth in the face of moral or mental 
peril. Livingstone dying on his knees in Africa 
is a real hero to the boy; so is Stanley, the ex- 
plorer, who went to Livingstone's relief in the 
heart of Africa. He can appreciate Dr. Kenneth 
McKenzie, the brilliant young medical missionary 
in China, who stood up with radiant face while the 
mob hurled missiles at him, who said he never 
had such a sense of victory before, the earnest of 
a victory later on. 

It is always a fortunate thing for a boy and 
for his father, if the latter can satisfy his best 
ideals of heroism. It is worth while for that 
father to spend his whole life learning how. He 
must begin with himself before the boy is born. 
In fact his father's father must have begun with 
him before he was born, just as he now begins 
with his boy and prepares him to be some coming 
boy's hero. A subtle process of imitation is go- 
ing on. The boy walks like his hero, talks like 



108 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

him, wants to go into the same business with him, 
is growing like him, for better or for worse. 
Fortunate it is if his group of heroes also in- 
cludes some older boy or young man. Jesus 
of Nazareth, the perfect One, has made it 
His mission on earth to fill all his aspirations and 
yearnings. The boy must know Him and adore 
Him and make it his one aim to so live as to gain 
His approval. Then he will grow like that One. 



XVII 

HIS SWEETHEARTS 

I use the plural advisedly. They usually come 
in an ascending series. After one fitful fever is 
over it is continued in the next school term or va- 
cation. He can hardly remember when he first 
began to have sweethearts and he is almost sure 
to acquire the fixed habit. 

Now, if memory is not playing a trick on me, 
spells of cardiac trouble begin as early as eight 
and increase in vehemence till the last fatal at- 
tack. The "spells" are frequent and fleeting, 
furious and funny. Mumps and measles and 
whooping cough may be evaded, but sweethearts 
never. The former attack him only once each, 
and if they do not succeed in dragging him off 
the earth the first time, they retire from the field 
and leave him in full possession, sometimes with 
a few scars as souvenirs of the struggle. But 
his troubles of the heart never cease to attack 
him. 

If the first spell comes early, the next comes 
soon thereafter and each proclaims its presence 
to all the members of the household. They know 
precisely what ails him. The rapt and sometimes 
tragic air, the far-away look in his eye, the pre- 

109 



110 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

occupied manner in which he engages in conver- 
sation, the way he looks ashamed or elated when 
a certain little girl's name is mentioned — all are 
symptoms that are not lost on the experienced 
onlookers. No one spell can last long, but it is 
frightfully exhausting while it does last. 

Different temperaments modify the symptoms, 
but they are substantially the same. The appe- 
tite falls off; a philosophical tendency toward ab- 
straction shows itself; a certain uncanny way of 
comparing a certain girl, once in a while, with 
other girls shows his state of mind. He likes to 
give that girl an apple, a pencil, anything ; he en- 
joys adjusting her skates, coasting with her or 
defending her in some heroic way. He feels a 
decided nausea, accompanied by a militant am- 
bition, whenever he sees another boy talking too 
freely with her. He has great ability in saying 
to himself many lofty things about her and using 
forms of expression that border close on the 
poetic for one so young, and yet he is stricken 
with hopeless aphasia whenever he tries to say 
any of those fine things to her. 

You yourself, if man grown, remember when 
the first attack came on and how severe it was. 
You really felt alarmed about yourself and were 
not sure you would ever be happy again, so 
mournful was the delirious pleasure and so alter- 
nating with pain. The constrictions around the 
throat and the stoppages around the heart seemed 
more than could be endured. "The restless, un- 



HIS SWEETHEARTS 111 

satisfied longing' ' would have done credit to 
Longfellow's "Evangeline." Just where it hurt 
the most you were not always sure. You loved to 
write her name and yours together and mark off 
the corresponding letters in both, then count off 
those left unmated, speaking the cabalistic for- 
mula, "friendship, love, idolise, hate," and the 
word that fell on the last letter indicated her state 
of feeling toward you. It was a singular thing 
that when it came out right you felt you were se- 
cure and when it came out on the wrong word, 
you would not believe it, but laughed it off. It 
was a serious time for you, and an anxious time 
for the innocent bystanders. You passed through 
the first series with Martha and Mary and Eunice 
and Alice, and to your great surprise did not die 
a single time. 

It must have been toward the end of the first 
series that you began to make use of the episto- 
lary means of expression. You had seldom done 
more than gaze around at school and see if she 
was there, look over the top of your book and 
grin at her in your own fetching way, and use 
other indirect means of declaring yourself. But 
now you "take your pen in hand" and "write 
these few lines" to let her know that she is 
sweeter than sugar and prettier than roses and 
violets, taken singly or combined, in bud, bloom 
or in whole bouquets. 

You also longed for an opportunity to tell her 
in private just what was the matter with you. 



112 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

You began to give your hair some attention, but 
it would never stay combed. You became aware 
for the first time in your life that your hair needed 
combing. Who knew when you might suddenly 
find yourself alone with her? And you in- 
tended to be ready. You knew exactly what you 
would say. And one afternoon, when all the 
boys and girls had gone and you lingered around, 
she came out of the door and you were with her 
at last. You started off with her, but felt sheep- 
ish and, to your great surprise, you had abso- 
lutely nothing to say and nothing to say it with. 
It had not occurred to you that you would lose 
tongue and head, but that is what happened. She 
was provokingly serene. It irritated you to think 
that she did not discern your intent and co-oper- 
ate in a purpose which she could not fail to ap- 
prove. "It looks like it was going to snow," you 
ventured, and she began to chatter about the 
party she and the other girls were getting up. It 
was already worse than a snow-storm — it was a 
frost. Your awkwardness oppressed you all the 
way home, and you secretly resolved to try send- 
ing a letter. 

In that note you not only expressed the most 
exalted love that had, as yet, been experienced 
by a boy, but you distinctly declared a desire to 
"lick" any boy whose conduct was not just to her 
liking. You really wished you might whip about 
half a dozen boys, all on her account, like a knight- 



HIS SWEETHEARTS 113 

errant of the brave days of old, fighting for his 
lady's protection or to win her smile. But your 
nerve failed you when you tried to hand her the 
note and someone near by saw your face turn a 
fiery hue. Then you revealed your state of mind 
to a small boy friend who volunteered to deliver 
the note and bring back a reply. But that was a 
grand blunder, from the standpoint of your peace. 
That boy handed his coat to your sister to hold 
for him, while he ran a race with another boy, 
the note dropped out of his pocket, your sister 
picked it up and read it and that was the begin- 
ning of a drop in the temperature. Fun for the 
whole family evolved from that accident. The 
note was delivered, not by the boy, but by your 
sister, and she brought back a similar note 
written by the dear girl, comparing you very 
favourably not only to a first-class brand of sac- 
charine matter, but to red roses and blue violets, 
and she had a rhyme in it ; all of which would have 
been highly creditable to her and heaven to you, 
if it had come in time and under other circum- 
stances. It was too late ; the tide was going out. 
You tried to laugh, but it was more like the mer- 
riment of a mummy. You almost fainted. You 
felt as you did that time when you went behind 
a tree and experimented with an old cigar and 
were cured of the smoking habit before it was 
formed. The sudden change in your feelings 
toward that girl and the resentment with which 



114 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

you viewed all creation were a study. You dis- 
covered that very minute, that you didn't like 
her anyhow. The charm was broken. You 
looked around and grinned just as you did years 
afterward when you took laughing gas at college, 
and suddenly "came to." You were not sorry to 
be free once more and to go on about your busi- 
ness of being a boy, which had been interrupted 
by this temporary delirium. 

During one of these attacks you began the ac- 
cumulation of poetry in her interest and, if you 
had only known it, she was gathering mementos at 
the same time. You remember how superior she 
seemed to your own sister whom another boy con- 
sidered the most bewitching creature that ever 
breathed. You may also recall how you softened 
into meekness and awkwardness in her presence 
so very unlike your usual unrestrained freedom 
of speech and action. 

But when you were about sixteen, it was most 
severe. It tangled itself up with school and busi- 
ness and chums, and seemed the final number in 
the last series. When it was all over, you came 
out with the wholesome notion that there were 
others, attractive and worthy, and you became all 
the better fitted to settle down in later years, with 
the one of your mature choice. 

Singular how a boy would rather talk with any- 
body else in the world about such a matter than 
with his father or mother — unless — unless they 
have been in the habit of sharing in all his expe- 



HIS SWEETHEARTS 115 

riences and of being the refuge and reinforce- 
ment to which he is accustomed to come about 
everything. Thrice fortunate is the boy who has 
such help from them. 






XVIII 

FOKMING HIS HABITS 

A boy has to have quite a number of habits, if 
he ever expects to be much of a boy or to become 
a man. His body needs the habit of turning food 
into blood and then blood into boy. His mind 
needs the habit of turning sights and sounds into 
truth and character. His memory is to be merely 
the good mental habit of holding on to what he 
has learned. His morals, at any time, are very 
largely the sum of his habits in learning and 
practising truth and right. 

When nature equipped him with the power of 
forming habits she did him a great kindness; 
for without the reinforcement they bring, he 
would be no farther along the day he dies than 
the day he was born. Habit is that power which 
makes it easier to do a thing the second than the 
first time, still easier each subsequent time, till, 
by and by, the thing almost does itself. 

If it were not for habit, he would, each day, 
have to learn again how to talk and walk ; would 
have to get acquainted again with his father and 
mother and friends and the contents of his pock- 
ets, and with his books every morning. But that 
is too dismal a subject to dwell on. 

116 



FORMING HIS HABITS 117 

Habits have a way of increasing in power, with 
a cumulative effect, till there is scarcely a limit 
to what they may enable one to do. Eobert Hou- 
don's wonderful memory was the result of habit. 
He trained that memory to retain everything he 
saw, till after only a few moments in a large li- 
brary, he could leave the room and give the title 
of each volume, the shelf it was on and its dis- 
tance from the end of the shelf. He travelled 
over the world, giving exhibitions of his remark- 
able mental habit, called memory. 

It is through habit men learn to do things that 
are, at first, disagreeable, even wrong, without 
feeling it. Mr. George Staunton saw a murderer, 
in India, who, in order to retain his life and his 
caste too, submitted to the horrible penalty of 
sleeping seven years on a bed whose top was 
studded with iron points, made as sharp as they 
could be without breaking the flesh. He had al- 
ready served five years and his skin was like the 
hide of a rhinocerous, but he told Mr. Staunton 
he had learned to like the bed and he thought he 
should continue to use it from choice. A pirate 
tells how his conscience made a hell for him after 
his first murder; then he killed another man with 
less discomfort and he kept on till he could lie 
down by the side of his victim and sleep soundly. 
So the matter of habit has its horrible, as well as 
its helpful, side. 

It really may have a deterrent effect on a boy 
to know, in advance, that he can get used to lying 






118 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

and drinking and stealing and doing every kind of 
badness, and becomes more and more skilful and 
heartless and inured to it through the help of 
habit. That may prompt him to keep his eye on 
the dangerous thing. And he can grow more 
lazy and shiftless and cruel and avaricious, when 
he once starts at it, till he becomes a bundle of 
vicious habits. Yet he can start in the right 
lines and make habits that will be both a pro- 
peller and a protection to him. Dr. John A. 
Broadus used to say to his students: "Practice 
makes perfect — bad practice makes perfectly 
bad." Make good habits and you can make good. 

But a boy has to have help in initiating his 
habits, for he is likely to start some wrong ones. 
Here again we see that God-given instinct of imi- 
tation at work. He gets the muscular habit of 
walking from seeing others walk and from the 
guidance and support of hands that show him how 
to take the first step. He will need some habits, 
after awhile, that he doesn't now know he will 
need, and he will not start those habits Unless 
someone gets him at it in a directive way. He is 
almost sure to get some to going which he will find 
a great injury to him, but he doesn 't know it now ; 
and the most serious thing about it is that he will 
find it very difficult to get rid of them. 

It does seem easy, sometimes, to give up good 
habits, while the correction of bad ones is one 
of the hardest things ever attempted. It seems 
no task to grow crooked teeth, but if you under- 



FOEMING HIS HABITS 119 

take to straighten them the dentist will have to 
keep all kinds of machinery in your aching mouth, 
for weary weeks. But the straightening of 
crooked teeth and pigeon toes and bent backs and 
crossed eyes is easy compared with reforming 
habits when they are deformed. Deforming good 
habits is much easier. 

Those who understand the workings of brain 
and nerves tell us that when we think, a certain 
amount of energy is discharged in the brain, and 
that energy goes tearing through the nerve tis- 
sues making a path as it goes, and the next dis- 
charge of energy will follow that same path, till 
all of it flows that way, unless we prevent it. 
Habits make roads for thoughts and feelings and 
purposes, and roads should always run in the 
right direction and be built of the right material. 
Even when a good road has been built, some 
wrong thought may send a discharge of energy 
in the wrong direction and quickly cut out a new 
path for the feet of habit. One really has to be 
keeping up his roads all his life. A habit will 
live forever, unless it is interfered with. As 
none of us has ever failed to get some wrong ones 
started, we have the perpetual task of forming 
good ones and reforming bad ones. 

The great habit-forming time of a boy is from 
birth till twelve. The golden age of memory is 
from ten to fifteen. Dr. Hawies says that if one 
wants to adapt his muscular and nervous habits 
to the playing of the violin, he must begin before 



120 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

he is ten. I undertook it after I was thirty, and 
soon quit. At twelve a boy; comes under the 
reign of law. 

Tendencies and activities crystallise into hab- 
its very rapidly. All the time that elapses be- 
tween the doing of a thing the first time and the 
second is engaged in giving a set in that direc- 
tion. In the fall, the beginner at swimming bids 
good-bye to the water, with a great awkwardness, 
but is surprised the next summer, to find that he 
has made decided progress since the fall before, 
though he has not been in water except in a bath- 
tub. The growth has been in the direction of the 
bent given to his muscles and nerves. Dr. James 
reminds us that we learn to swim in winter and 
skate in summer. 

No one knows when some emergency may arise 
that will require all the stores of strength se- 
cured through the aid of habit. Down in Ludlow, 
Kentucky, a deaf old man was crossing the rail- 
road track when he looked up and saw an engine 
coming upon him. The engineer had seen him 
as they came around the curve, had given him 
the signal, and when he saw that the old man 
had not heard it, had put on the brakes, but was 
not able to stop in time. When that old man saw 
the engine at his side and almost felt the cow- 
catcher against his feet, he didn't have time to 
get out of the way by walking across or turning 
back. As quick as a flash, he turned a hand- 
spring backwards and escaped with a few harmless 



FORMING HIS HABITS 121 

bruises. He was able to do that because the mus- 
cles had formed the habit of doing such things 
years before. Every good habit the boy can 
form he will need either in the ordinary duties 
or the unanticipated emergencies of life. 

It is mental habit that directs muscular actions. 
Moral habits make important decisions instantly. 
Questions have to be decided, not after careful 
thought, but without thought ; the cherished senti- 
ments and the usual ways of doing will prompt 
the decision. No one is swept off his feet by a 
sudden temptation. He falls because he has been 
in the habit of giving hospitality to wrong ideas. 
The defaulting cashier had been a mental de- 
faulter before he did the overt act. 

The great tasks of the mind can be accomplished 
because the mind has the habit of accomplishing 
all its tasks ; it can lift its heaviest loads because 
it is in the business of lifting loads. 

The great value of the concrete example cannot 
be ignored. Clear and discriminating teaching 
also is essential. No one else can form his habits 
for him. Mr. Dooley says : " You can lead a boy 
to college, but you can't make him think.' ' Yet 
his intelligent and enthusiastic co-operation can 
usually be secured, in the formation of desirable 
habits, if someone studies his needs and his nature 
and helps the boy, as if his own life depended on 
it. 



XIX 

CULTIVATING HIS WILL 

The culture of his will means the culture of the 
whole boy, means more than does the culture of 
any one other part of him. We can point to all the 
magnificent failures we care to think of and they 
have everything else but will. It means the power 
to decide, to determine, and to stick to the determi- 
nation. Men may have genius, as Coleridge had, 
and be as inefficient as he. They may have intel- 
lect, and yet lack the organising and vitalising 
power of will. If the boy has no will power to 
start with we may dismiss him at once as a hope- 
less case. If he has a weak will it may be trained ; 
if he has a strong will it must be trained. The 
feeble will may be reinforced till it acquires resist- 
less force ; the strong will may evaporate in force- 
less wilfullness. Both kinds must be taken in 
hand and set right and set to going right. 

In his culture every boy ought to have hard- 
ships. Judge Lindsay says, "The best hope I can 
have for any American boy is that he will have a 
hard time rather than a good time, infinite diffi- 
culty, rather than ease." Someone has said 
that "character consists of a perfectly educated 
will" and the statement is not untrue, though it 

122 






CULTIVATING HIS WILL 123 

may not include all the truth. It requires a judg- 
ment to weigh, a conscience to recognise and de- 
mand the right and a will to determine and stay 
by the right. In the light of that truth it seems 
passing strange that, when we have arranged 
courses of study for the culture of all the other 
faculties of the soul, we never have gotten up one 
for the scientific study and the artistic culture of 
the will? Perhaps it is not so deplorable after 
all, because, while the studies are prepared for 
other faculties than the will, it requires the will 
to push through them and that is the very best dis- 
cipline it can get. The hard struggle most of us 
have been called on to make from the beginning 
has been a better course than any one could devise 
in an artificial way. It is claimed that New Eng- 
land farmers have revelled in the hard conditions 
found on that " stern and rock-bound coast'' and 
back in the interior, and have been so satisfied to 
get less money but more men from the contests, 
that they have been slow to avail themselves of 
the advantages of the scientific farming of recent 
years; they don't like to miss the discipline that 
comes with the struggle against hard conditions. 
But the time seems at hand when methods must 
be deliberately planned for the culture of the will. 
It is a live question. Hardships are growing less 
hard. Few duties are required of a boy in the 
home as compared with those he used to be called 
upon to perform. Boys are left to themselves 
more. They live in a more complex environment, 






124 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

amid scenes and activities that make a confused 
impression on them and do not attract them to 
any definite line of willed action. Life is system- 
atised and they find themselves in the grip of an 
order of things that often relieve them of the need 
of initiative. Machines instead of muscles do the 
work. They are called on to watch a machine in- 
stead of putting will power into their muscles. 
Very few muscles are called into use in factory or 
office ; some are never used at all, but the pull on 
the nerves is steady and devitalising. The will 
is atrophied. Life is on the surface and the virtue 
of thoroughness, which means throughness, doesn't 
seem necessary. The era of machines is an era 
of shrewdness and not of strength. 

It is a time when boyhood misses the authority 
so distinctly felt in other days and the will grows 
without steadfastness. There is no strong author- 
ity above and controlling, thereby serving the pur- 
pose of director and exemplar. 

I am not pessimistic in pointing out the undesir- 
able characteristics of to-day, in their relation to 
the culture of the will, the keystone of boyhood 
and manhood, but I am frankly telling the truth 
in order to ask all who have charge of the boys 
of to-day to see to it that their wills have the train- 
ing which it is so difficult to gain without intelli- 
gent planning. 

The conditions that tend to impair a boy's will 
require that he have power of will to meet them. 
That much more will must be cultivated in him. 



CULTIVATING HIS WILL 125 

The late Sam Jones said that a man needs "a 
backbone like a telegraph pole," and he referred 
to will power, or, at least, to one phase of it. The 
boy has not only the tremendous task of getting 
a good strong will in the face of influences that are 
undermining it in a very subtle way — so subtle 
that he would usually resent the intimation that 
there were such influences at all — but he has to 
learn to choose the thing that, in each case, is what 
he needs rather than what he desires, or what will 
secure future good rather than present gratifi- 
cation. No boy knows how to do that till he is 
taught. The boy has to get his judgment working 
clearly and reliably. He has to get his sense of 
right so unerring that it will choose the thing 
which, perhaps, he does not now wish, and do it 
because it is better for him, or will be better for 
him in the long run. 

These decisions which he makes often have to 
be the result of the unconscious sentiments and 
reflections that have been gathering in his soul. 
Take into account another fact — that he is, and 
must ever be, unconscious of many of the influences 
that determine his decisions and shape his life, 
and you feel that there is peril due to his helpless- 
ness which calls for all the assistance you can 
render. There is nothing more satanic in our 
commercial life than the disposition to exploit 
childhood for revenue. The weaknesses and the 
powers of innocence have not escaped the cupidity 
of commercialism, as it has exploited the play 



126 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

instinct and the sex impulse and all social senti- 
ments to enervate the will by throwing over child- 
hood and youth the spell of false and vicious 
pleasures. 

Another appeal to men to help the boy get a true 
and strong will is that the unformed creature has 
to take a broad sweep of life and make decisions 
at sixteen and eighteen that are to determine his 
character and standing at sixty and eighty, in- 
stead of waiting till his maturity to decide. 

Now let us make a brief summary of the chief 
things the will does. It must determine on what 
the judgment decides; it must drive each power 
in its own specific work; it must get to working 
automatically, with the support of all the other 
powers, so that it will take its decisions from 
habit; it must stand for what is good for one 
rather than for what one prefers. When properly 
trained it is not only indispensable, but it is the 
best thing one has. Persistence is considered, by 
common consent, equal to any other power we 
have in value, and that is a function of the will. 
Mr. John D. Eockefeller and the famous Eev. Dr. 
John A. Broadus were talking and the prince of 
preachers asked the captain of industry what he 
regarded the reason for the largest number of fail- 
ures among young men and Mr. Eockefeller re- 
plied, without hesitation, "The lack of the ability 
to stick to a thing.' ' Von Moltke's habit was to 
" First weigh, then venture," and never turn back. 



CULTIVATING HIS WILL 127 

There are several things that must be done for 
the boy, in order to develop his will : 

First — it must be protected from disease, for 
there are diseases of the will as of the stomach, or 
blood. Physical laziness is a disease of the will. 
He must have work as a preventive of this, if for 
no other reason. A large number of the ailments 
are only mental and any one who can reach the 
will, with almost any kind of stimulus, can cure 
them. The extraordinary cures of which we have 
heard so much were almost all a treatment of the 
will for its diseases. But effective protection is 
accomplished through active assertion of the will. 
That is secured through — 

Second — Authority. An authoritative direction 
of the boy's life is just as important as his life, no 
less, no more. That authority must express itself 
more in directive than in corrective ways. But 
he must not mistake that higher will, it may be of 
his father and mother ; it may be of his God. Dr. 
G. Stanley Hall, a man who has been in the fore- 
front of American students of childhood and espe- 
cially of adolescence, says: "Will culture, for 
boys, is rarely as thorough as it should be, with- 
out more or less flogging.' ' If flogging is re- 
quired, at any time, in the discharge of the sacred 
function of parenthood, then the painful duty is 
not to be evaded. As already said, a higher will 
to which his must bow is essential to the steady 
and rational growth of his will. No human au- 



128 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

thority is effective that does not lead to a respect 
for divine authority. 

Third — his will must have manual training, as 
expression and outlet and reactive discipline. 
There is not a faculty of the soul that does not 
get discipline through manual training; but, as 
strengthener and trainer of the will, it excels. 
You have to have the will to believe, the will to 
remember, the will to achieve and the will to dig. 
Manual labour involves hardship and that is neces- 
sary to discipline. It co-ordinates all the physical 
with the psychical and that gives the psychical a 
complete outlet. Exactness in work requires, and 
corresponds to, truthfulness in thought and 
speech. It is a soft and silly sympathy that 
shields a boy from hardship. 



XX 

BEING HIS OWN MAN 

Every boy looks forward, with special delight, 
to the time when he will be his own man, as he likes 
to phrase it. By that he means the time when he 
can do as he wishes, as the grown folks do, and 
not be responsible to anybody but himself; when 
he can quit going to school and running on errands, 
if he wishes. All of us were once at that stage and 
it is not wrong to want to be capable of directing 
our own lives. The boy may love his father and 
mother as he should, but he wants to be free from 
their control, just as they are free from the control 
of their parents. 

If he doesn't know it at first, he has to learn 
that he can't become his own man by simply pass- 
ing out from under the control of his parents, but 
he must come under the control of his own well- 
prepared judgment and will and conscience. 
"When he reaches the age for taking himself out of 
the hands of his parents, just as they once reached 
a similar age, he should have been so trained in the 
mastery of himself that he is ready for the new 
responsibility. There is no safety in freedom, 
without self-control. Unless he has been given 
little tasks in self-direction all along, and more 

129 



130 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

and more, as he got used to it, lie will have too 
big a task on his hands all at once. The best thing 
his father and mother ever do for him is to teach 
him to get along without them. 

Many a boy is, in fact, wiser than his parents 
and is so recognised before he is old enough to be 
set free from the law of obedience, but it is not a 
good thing to let him know that they think him 
wiser. Before he is really his own man two things 
are necessary. He must reject every other mas- 
ter ; he must secure positive and personal control 
of every power of his body and mind. Three 
rivals will dispute his right. 

One rival will be some strong personality in the 
form of a boy or some other person who will so 
appeal to his weaknesses, or even to his good 
traits, as to get the ascendency over him. If that 
boy controls him, for better or worse, he is not his 
own man. Another rival is public sentiment, in 
the form of the " bunch " or "gang" with which he 
goes. A boy will help make laws for the crowd, 
without feeling the need of any discipline for him- 
self and yet he is not his own man as long as he 
allows those laws to dominate his private life. 

His other rival is found on the inside of himself, 
among the passions and impulses and fancies 
which are likely to take the reins of government in 
hand any minute. A hot temper may be one of 
those rivals. When he is controlled by temper or 
jealousy or envy, when he lets any vulgar passion 
run away with him, that becomes his master. The 



BEING HIS OWN MAN 131 

effect of this is to weaken his will, confuse his 
judgment and dull his conscience. If he does not 
acquire such mastery of himself by the time he is 
twenty-two, he is almost sure to become a waif, the 
plaything of his own moods or of exterior influ- 
ences. 

There is a certain kind of false pride which often 
takes command of a boy. I frankly confess it was 
the case with me when I learned to chew tobacco — 
a habit that lasted only about two weeks, thanks to 
the pain it gave me one day when I was ploughing. 
"When a boy with yellow stain on his fingers walks 
into an office and asks for a position, it takes the 
boss only about two seconds to gather all the evi- 
dence he needs that the boy can't be trusted, for 
the simple reason that an appetite is in command 
and may spoil his work at any minute. Mr. 
Luther Burbank will not employ any one who 
smokes cigarettes, because that habit prevents the 
control over his nerves necessary for the delicate 
work of cultivating and training plants. 

A man was about to offer a very important po- 
sition to a young man, and they chanced to ride 
together on the cars. The young man was asked, 
by some travellers, to engage in a game of cards 
in which they put up a small stake, and he ac- 
cepted. The employer did not make the offer, 
because he knew that any one who engaged in 
gambling was not his own master and would be 
wrecked some day. 

When a boy becomes his own man he has to take 



132 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

in hand a good many things that belong to him- 
self. One is his imagination, for instance, and its 
control is no easy task. He must know when to 
turn it loose, which way to send it, when to recall 
it and how to harness it up to heavy work. All 
his other powers must be in hand, ready for or- 
ders. 

Now a boy naturally prefers to control others 
rather than himself. Thinking he is right, he is 
not apt to single himself out for any disciplinary 
treatment and he usually regards enforced obedi- 
ence to those who are over him as all the dis- 
cipline he needs, which means that the task of 
self-control must be set by another. Boys form 
laws and by-laws for their clubs, but they don't 
aim at discipline in the interest of self-control, 
though they may gain it, as they often do, uncon- 
sciously, through contact with each other and 
obedience to their own laws; they gain it uncon- 
sciously and without aiming at it, mind you. 

And he has another drawback. He is in a state 
of unstable equilibrium; he has to learn himself 
as his new traits come out. Then he is apt to 
drop everything else to get acquainted with the 
latest comer among his attributes ; while he is do- 
ing that, something unexpected is apt to take 
place. The result is turmoil and seeming defeat. 
But he mounts again and is in the saddle. Thus 
he learns by experience. He is not perfect, but 
he is aiming to be, in his imperfect way, and there 
are some things he is trying to do. Dr. Broadus 



BEING HIS OWN MAN 133* 

used to say that a good student was one who could 
take up his studies when he would rather not, 
could go on with them when he would rather stop 
and could stop when he would rather go on. In 
other words, he could make himself do what he 
ought to do, whether he wanted to do it or not. 
Such a student is his own man. 

A good test of self-command is one's ability to 
fix and hold one's attention to a given matter as 
long as one wishes and then as long as one ought. 
A boy can't be his own man without first get- 
ting control of himself. That means control over 
his body, so as to conserve its strength, prevent 
spoliation of its power and increase both its phys- 
ical and moral value. It means that he must keep 
its powers up to its highest. He is not his body's 
master, unless he keeps it clean and knows how 
to relax and rest — knows how to take himself 
when those curious and rapid chemical changes 
take place in the body which compel an instant re- 
adjustment of himself to his task. He must be 
master of his muscles and imagination and his 
ideals. Knowledge of his sex-nature and its mis- 
sion is essential to self-control. 

To summarise the suggestions implied in the 
foregoing: 

First — he will never become his own man truly, 
unless, for a long time, he is somebody else's boy, 
owned and directed by him or them, with a view 
to becoming his own. He will not be apt to ac- 
quire the power of self-direction, unless he is 



134 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

given a start in the right direction and taught 
to steer himself as he goes. His parents' hands 
are the two banks of the stream that prescribe 
the direction in which he must row, but they must 
never do his rowing for him. By and by he may 
choose another channel for his life and guide him- 
self. When they leave his life like an unbanked 
river to flow into any morass that invites it, they 
do so on pain of dire disaster. 

His nature demands, even though he does not 
always voluntarily recognise the need, that he 
should be authoritatively directed in the early 
stages of his life. If direction is given in the 
right spirit, he usually receives it with special 
pleasure. The reins of authority must be held 
slightly taut, so that he will feel the lightest 
pressure and have a chance to become a fellow- 
labourer with those in authority over him. Thus 
he learns. 

Second — he must learn, at the earliest possible 
moment, that the authority of the parent is de- 
rived from the One from whom all authority 
comes, and that, when he is released from that 
of the parent, he must deal directly and personally 
with the original Father, as the parents did, or 
better than they did. In releasing him from their 
control, they are simply passing him over to the 
One from whom they have been receiving all their 
authority and for whom they have been preparing 
him. If he is really ready for that transfer, he 
has learned from them how to direct himself un- 






BEING HIS OWN MAN 135 

'der that higher One, through the experiences he 
has had and the instructions received. 

Third — parents must lead him into those ex- 
periences without which he can never acquire self- 
control, by restraining themselves and leaving 
him room to exercise his powers of choice and 
invention. His free powers must be utilised in 
the tasks assigned to him. David said, "Thy 
gentleness hath made great.' ' In everything in 
which man's interests are, God has restrained 
Himself, and left us something to do and room 
in which to do it. That is the only way to reach 
the kingship of self-control and the boy is en- 
titled to be led along that way. 



XXI 

THE BOY PRODIGY 

A boy wonder may still be found, here and 
there, but I am not bringing a charge to that ef- 
fect against any boy of my acquaintance. There 
have been such in the past, there will be in the 
future, and we have heard of a few now living, 
though it is not likely that the charge could be 
sustained in every instance. 

We can never forget Watt, whose genius 
showed itself when he watched the steam lift the 
lid of his mother's tea-kettle; nor John Stuart 
Mill, who was thinking through philosophical 
problems, and in technical language, long before 
he reached his teens. Pope said: "I lisped in 
numbers, for the numbers came," even though 
some now think he never did anything but lisp, 
except to limp. The late John Fiske was a good 
Greek, Latin and philosophical scholar before 
the average boy of that age had learned his gram- 
mar. At fourteen Huxley was a philosopher. 
Students of music can never forget how the boy 
Handel stole into the chapel in the dark and 
played the organ till they were attracted from 
all over the estate of the Duke of Saxe-Weissen- 
fels and thought it must be an angel while the 

136 



THE BOY PEODIGY 137 

duke pronounced him a genius ; nor how Wolfgang 
Mozart was playing tunes at four, and did not 
have an equal on the harpsichord at twelve. Jo- 
sef Hofmann was the wonderful boy pianist a few 
years ago, and now has made good as a man. 

In music early genius has been brilliant because 
the emotions are always more active in youth 
than the intellect; next to music they have ap- 
peared in literature. Pope wrote his "Ode to 
Solitude" at twelve. At twelve Macaulay won 
fame by his first volume. Cowley wrote "Py- 
ramus and Thisbe" at twelve. At sixteen Tasso 
wrote "Kinaldo," Hugo printed a volume of 
poems and so did Chatterton. Shelley wrote 
"Queen Mab" and Disraeli "Vivian Gray" at 
eighteen. Dickens was made famous by his 
"Sketches" and Byron by his "English Bards 
and Scotch Keviewers" at twenty-one. Alexan- 
der Hamilton was talking and writing like an old 
prophet at twelve. In a few months, after arriv- 
ing in New York from his native West Indies to 
attend King's College, he had thought out the 
question of the right of our country to independ- 
ence, and, in a patriotic meeting, in the open field 
came forward and electrified the audience with 
a great speech — and he was only seventeen. The 
late President Harper of the University of Chi- 
cago was such a wonder as a grown man that we 
forget his remarkable boyhood. Nor must we 
forget the newsboy, Thomas A. Edison. 

And there have been "Boy orators" and "Boy 



138 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

preachers " and "Boy business men." No one 
denies that there have been, and still will be, 
boy geniuses. Little William James Sidis has 
dazzled the wise men of the east with his conver- 
sations, writings and addresses on philosophical 
and mathematical subjects. He will soon know all 
that Harvard can teach him, while Nicholas 
Wiener is treating Cornell to the same sort of a 
sensation. Frederick C. Leonard, the young as- 
tronomer of Chicago, only fifteen now, was writ- 
ing learned articles for the English and American 
magazines at thirteen. 

We are not producing a great many boy 
geniuses at the present time, but perhaps we have 
all we need. We really do not need as many as 
they did in past times, because the average boy 
knows so much more about scientific and other 
matters than grown-up men knew a hundred 
years ago. Franklin would have given all his 
possessions to know as much about electricity as 
any boy of twelve knows to-day. The mass of 
common knowledge bulks so large and the level 
of the intellectual life is so high that we do not 
need men to blaze the way as far ahead as the 
genius used to do. And even when there is a 
genius he is not so far beyond his contemporaries 
as the genius of the past was ahead of his. We 
have lifted up the commonplace till the uncom- 
mon does not dazzle quite so much as it once did. 

Boy wonders had a way of coming in groups, 
and they have come when conditions have been 



THE BOY PRODIGY 139 

especially favourable to them. The greatest 
group that ever arose at one period was in the 
Elizabethan Era, just at the revival of learning 
and the waking up of the sentiments of liberty. 
The Crusades had made the people of the world 
better acquainted with each other, the discoveries 
of new lands set people to travelling, the intellec- 
tual treasures of Constantinople were released 
from their long imprisonment, the printing press 
was invented, the inductive method of study be- 
gan to be employed, and the spirit of dawn was 
breathing through the darkness. 

Then the great boys began to report, especially 
in literature, science, philosophy and statecraft, 
but mostly in literature. True to the gang in- 
stinct, they selected one group of callings at a 
time. At one period they are almost all literary 
geniuses, at another time musical; again they are 
painters, still again statesmen, and at the present 
time they are mainly "Captains of industry," 
"Wizards of finance," "Napoleons of business." 
And it is genius, too. Rockefeller is perhaps as 
great a genius, in his sphere, as Shakespeare was 
in his. 

Not every boy considered a genius by his ad- 
miring relatives is one. He may be precocious 
but not a genius. But suppose there is a real boy 
genius at large in your community, what then? 
It brings up the old question, "Why should the 
spirit of mortal be proud?" His spirit or that of 
his kindred? Who knows but it may be only a 



140 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

case of infantile or puerile precocity which will 
disappear as the years go. Neither he nor his 
friends should ever forget that; try as he may, 
he may be distanced by some whose powers do not 
develop as fast as his. There are men-wonders 
whose boyhood was not unusual. Wagner, Bach, 
Goldsmith, Cowper, Franklin, Darwin, Defoe and 
DeMorgan belong to the latter class. 

And there are some alarming possibilities be- 
fore him. Genius is not insanity, as some of the 
wranglers have claimed; nor is it abnormal, save 
that it is unusual; nor is it what is called a 
"sport." One may be what we often call a "uni- 
versal genius," like Goethe, or Michael Angelo, or 
Gladstone, or Shakespeare. And yet he is apt to 
be one-sided and have some serious defects which, 
will prove his undoing, as a defect in will, judg- 
ment, sympathy. He may lack in power of con- 
centration. The latter was the defect of Cole- 
ridge. The prodigy may be repressed and neg- 
lected. He may be led to think that he does not 
need training, nor discipline, but genius is never 
independent of such things and it takes hard work 
to mature and bring it to the fulfilment of its 
bright promise. The delicate nerve tissues may 
be burnt out before he reaches the more serious 
work of his life. Genius may belong to one who 
has such serious defects of character as to make 
his undoing almost certain. Either by birth or 
culture he may be a combination of genius and 
fool. I saw a negro in the South who was once on 



THE BOY PRODIGY 141 

exhibition at the Atlanta Exposition for his abil- 
ity to divide and multiply, even with fractions, 
without pencil and paper, for he could neither 
read nor write. But that was all he could do. I 
knew another genius in mathematics, with a col- 
lege education, but the last time I heard of him 
there was nothing left but the mathematics and 
that was obscured and rendered ineffective by the 
mistakes and evil of his life. 

If, on careful examination, the boy proves to be 
a genius, never allow him to suspect it. If he 
should find it out, tell him of the fall of the genius 
and linger over its harrowing details till he him- 
self becomes aware of his perils ; then put him at 
hard work as if his life depended on it. Have him 
play with other boys, and they will help you keep 
the conceit out of him. Be his master and his 
adviser and keep heavy responsibilities from him 
till he gets beyond the most dangerous point. 
You may save him, after all. 

It may also be a comfort to know that some men 
who, in their maturity, were put in the genius 
class, were in their boyhood looked upon as 
stupid — among these are Wagner, James Russell 
Lowell, Goldsmith, Sir Humphry Davy, Byron, 
Hegel, Heine, Humboldt, Grant, Seward, Napo- 
leon, Darwin, Homer. There is hope for the 
genius, as well as for the dullard, but his success 
must come through a teachable spirit and growing 
responsibility. 






XXII 

OBGANISING BOYS 

It is easier to organise boys than to organise 
any other kind of business. They are standing 
around waiting to be organised into almost any 
sort of band which they or their kind friends can 
think of, for almost any kind of purpose. The 
boy has the honour of having inspired as many 
"movements" as any one of the other groups in 
whose behalf the various historic organisations 
have been started — young men, young women, 
young people, men and the rest. He also has the 
satisfaction of having precipitated a " crisis,' J 
now and then, of more or less large dimensions ; 
and he can get up a local "crisis' ' any morning, 
before he gets up himself. He was the main child 
in the "Children's Crusade," centuries ago and 
he almost started the modern Sunday-school 
movement, single-handed and alone. 

He can excite more kinds of interest than any 
one else and a great deal of anxiety as well. For 
him all kinds of factories are at work, with day 
and night shifts, turning out shoes and caps and 
pants and medicine and surgical instruments and 
school books and doctors and teachers and bread 
and meat and musical instruments and sweet- 

142 



ORGANISING BOYS 143 

hearts and all the other products needed by him 
in his all-absorbing business of being a boy. He 
is an unconscious patron of all the industries and 
starts a few himself. 

But of all the lines of business which his pres- 
ence with us has stimulated that of organising 
him is one of the most flourishing. He needs 
all we have ever done for him and more, but 
what is more to the point, he likes it even better 
than we do. There comes a time when he and 
the other boys would rather be organised than 
anything else. They stand around waiting for 
the organiser to come their way, but they can't 
wait long; if he doesn't come soon, they do it 
themselves. The best thing is that they do not 
insist on doing it themselves and really prefer the 
superior wisdom and skill of older people. They 
know, however, when it is done right, when it is 
structurally adapted to the nature and the in- 
terests of boys; for, if it does not take hold of 
their present interests in order to lead them out 
into other unknown but desirable interests, it is in 
opposition to all the laws of child-life and the laws 
of pedagogy as well. If it does not start with the 
boy where he is and as he is, it will never take 
him where it wants to take him, nor make him 
what it aims to make him. 

His characteristics include activity, hero wor- 
ship, loyalty, social enjoyment, play, love, altru- 
ism; and his interests are the things that appeal 
to these elements. The right kind of an organisa- 



144 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

tion must appeal in a way to lead to nobility of 
character. 

Something like twenty years ago the Boys' 
Brigade was started for his benefit and served 
with great effectiveness. It caught him by his 
devotion to the heroic, put regimentals on him and 
held him to a course of instruction in the manual 
of arms and field practice, as a soldier of righteous- 
ness. It failed to address itself to all his inter- 
ests, or addressed them in a defective way, and it 
has gone. But each movement as it has passed 
has left him a wiser and better-equipped boy, and 
left its place vacant for another movement still 
better adapted to his needs. 

Local modifications of the main ideas are still 
used effectively. The "Knights of King Ar- 
thur," with each lodge a castle, founded by Dr. 
Forbush of Boston, is popular in the east. The 
"Order of the American Boy" is a growing or- 
ganisation. The "Seton "Woodcraft Indians," 
started by Ernest Thompson Seton, has some 
vogue. Dan Beard's "Sons of Daniel Boone" is 
also popular. 

That the spirit of adventure and chivalry and 
service and loyalty is to be always harnessed up 
and utilised in making him a man is well indi- 
cated in the names chosen for local bands. In 
looking over a list of those of the "Order of the 
American Boy," I found such as these — "Doug- 
las Bustlers," "Cayuga Warriors," "Ohio Rough 
Eiders," "Majestic Guards," "Jackson Athletic 



ORGANISING BOYS 145 

Company," "Eehoboth Bull Dog Company," 
"Night Hawks Athletic Company," "American 
Eagle Athletic Company." Here we find the 
articles of a rising or a falling power. 

One of the latest claimants for the privilege of 
serving him is the "Boy Scout" movement, and 
it is spreading with a rapidity and a momentum 
never before known in any boys' movement. It 
originated in England in 1908 under the leader- 
ship of General Sir Baden-Powell, who followed a 
plan of organisation used with the boys of Mafe- 
king at the time of the Boer War, though he has 
also very carefully studied the methods employed 
in former work for boys, especially in the Boys' 
Brigade of America. 

There are now over a million Scouts in Great 
Britain and it has spread to all the British col- 
onies and to France, Germany, Spain, Italy, 
Switzerland, Eussia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, 
Austria-Hungary, Chile, Argentina, the United 
States, and is still going. In our country it is 
advancing fast, with national officers, whose head- 
quarters are in New York, and scout masters in 
every State in the Union who have received in- 
struction in methods of work. Colonel Theodore 
Eoosevelt is first vice-president and General 
Leonard Wood is a member of the general coun- 
cil. The Y. M. C. A. has taken it up and ap- 
pointed Mr. J. L. Alexander, one of its most 
expert workers with boys, to direct the whole 
movement in its organisation. 



146 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

This movement ought to be the best yet, and 
it gives promise of great usefulness. Its whole 
aim is to make efficient character and it starts at 
the right point, with the boy's honour. "On a 
scout's honour" is as solemn and binding as any 
oath can be. It disparages war except against 
wrong of any kind, and therefore omits the mili- 
tary drill, on the ground that it injures individual- 
ity and versatility and narrows one's interests. 
This is the judgment of General Baden-Powell, 
who ought to know. It trains the boy in things 
that fit him for danger and duty, but does it by 
stages — first as a tenderfoot, next as a second- 
class scout, then as a first-class scout. The in- 
struction that goes with each degree is surprising 
in its variety and fresh interest. Within the 
ranks a " first-class" scout may gain honour 
badges for ambulance work, for marksmanship 
and pioneer work. 

He learns by practice rather than in books — 
woodcraft, animal nature, out-of-door sports, first 
aid to the injured, and much more ; and each boy 
is expected and expects to "do a good turn each 
day to someone." It is said that an accident can 
scarcely happen anywhere in England, but boy 
scouts are the first on the ground and render the 
most intelligent aid. It is democratic and will 
not allow any social distinctions among the boys 
themselves — boys of lords working side by side 
with boys of their gardeners. 



ORGANISING BOYS 147 

This bids fair to become the most popular, in- 
teresting, widespread and long-continued method 
of organising boys, because it seems to appeal to 
their "get-together" instincts and to all their in- 
terests; it has been thoroughly thought out, pro- 
viding all kinds of plans and instructions for lead- 
ers and variety for the boys ; it is flexible and can 
be made to serve social, industrial, benevolent, 
educational, patriotic, altruistic and religious 
ends ; and it is always ethical. 

In organising boys, parents and leaders should 
put them with boys of the same general age and 
interests, of the same station in life as far as 
possible, and assist them by furnishing as much 
suggestion as possible on the question of method, 
thinking on ahead of them, so as to be able to di- 
rect them with an intelligence that they will ad- 
mire. So many good plans for local organisation 
have been worked out in connection with the or- 
ganisations mentioned, and many others, that any 
one can get help by simply writing to their head- 
quarters. Sunday-schools are organising more 
perfectly these days. Several things are needed 
for an efficient class: Organisation — a good 
leader; a clear division of forces into all the 
kinds of service, such as look-out, benevolences, 
missions, church attendance, athletics, music, etc. 
Some connection with organisations of a wide field 
and scope is valuable, as it gives them the sense 
of multitude and dignity of purpose. All the boys 



148 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

of a city or state in a given organisation, find pe- 
culiar reinforcement in each other. But the more 
individual the work can be made with the boys in 
an organised group the more valuable it will be. 



XXIII 

HIS MOTIVES 

A boy is more apt to have fairly good motives 
than false ones. He starts out in life with some- 
thing in him that will grow into a sense of right, 
and if he gets tangled it will be because he is 
taught it through the eye or the ear, or in both 
ways. If a boy's motives are entirely bad, he is 
seldom, if ever, entirely to blame. There is a 
reason. It may be, in fact, a case of atavism, 
in which he has gone back and appropriated the 
fetid tastes of some ancestor and his parents 
were not wise enough to protect him against the 
ravages of the atavistic beast. The inherited in- 
fluence did not come in the form of habits, but was 
a tendency or a spasmodic impulse, which could 
have been trained out of him. 

At the outset we must concede the difficulty of 
knowing exactly what a boy's motives are, for his 
deepest, most dominant motive is often tangled 
with superficial, secondary and temporary ones 
and these may be so complex and active as to con- 
fuse us. How to detach the real motive from this 
tangle of impulses and make it the dominant thing 
is the problem. If he asks you a question you 
are never sure of his purpose. It may be fun, or 

149 



150 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

fancy, or an evasion of duty. My brother once 
asked, "Mother, you say it is wrong to fight V 
"Yes, son." "Well, isn't whipping little boys 
fighting?" 

In an argument, his one motive is triumph, not 
truth, though he may not be untruthful. When 
he claims that Yale has a larger attendance than 
Chicago, and you prove your statistics, he replies 
that as to that point, Chicago ought to have more, 
and he says it with the tone of one who has won 
a victory which must be crushing and humiliating 
to you. If it is football, he is ready to treat his 
opponents with unpitying violence and yet, when 
the occasion passes, he is capable of rendering 
them unselfish and heroic kindness. Under the 
motives of ambition and revenge he seems an un- 
tamed Indian and, the next moment, a highly- 
developed philanthropist. 

A large and active group of idiosyncrasies and 
faults seems all there is of him. And the hope- 
less thing is that he draws his motives from his 
stage of development and his environment. In 
the gang period the interests of home and school 
often seem secondary. He reverts to the savage 
type and his motives correspond. A dog fight or 
chicken fight appeals to him with resistless charm ; 
and his motives match this stage of progress. 
The cave dwellers and cliff dwellers and Fiji 
islanders have little superiority over him. Dur- 
ing his Bohemian stage his vagrant tendencies re- 
veal another passing phase. 



HIS MOTIVES 151 

Two things encourage us. One is that these 
surface motives are not the deepest things about 
him. They are not the symptoms of anything 
bad, but of a new stage that he has reached, when 
new forces of the body and faculties of the mind 
are being released. He hardly knows what hurts 
him, but something is keeping his eyes wide open 
and his nerves all jumping. The other encour- 
agement is that these are the curious ways in 
which his very deepest and truest nature is find- 
ing itself. His devotion to the gang is the spirit 
of loyalty starting toward universal brotherhood ; 
his fondness for contests is the first exhibition of 
the warrior instinct getting ready to fight the good 
fight of faith; his Bohemianism is an incipient 
cosmopolitanism; his local attachments are the 
prelude to patriotism, his battles for his partners 
the forerunners of his battles in the higher inter- 
ests of his fellow men. 

His sense of honour sometimes breaks down 
when physical ailments keep him from getting 
possession of his own powers, and somebody is 
not wise enough to have surgical, or medical, 
or athletic, or dietetic attention given him. It 
more often breaks down at the treatment he re- 
ceives at home. Nervous irritation and the sense 
of being a negligible quantity often lead to loss 
of respect for his own word, or of noble pride in 
his own actions. He usually responds to the right 
treatment, as the flower to the sunshine. 

It is indispensable that his honour be recognised 



152 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

and trusted. It is there to start with. Get a 
microscope, if necessary, and identify and locate 
the divine thing, It is conscious of itself and 
must be recognised. To be doubted is to be 
doomed. He is often called a bad boy when his 
energy is construed into evil and his mischief into 
malice. When he is accused of deception or of 
taking things not his own, it amounts to an invi- 
tation to him to lie and steal. When wrong has 
been done and he is charged with it, without pre- 
liminary study and inquiry, he soon concludes that 
his reputation is already bad and he becomes reck- 
less as to whether he deserves it. 

Many a boy has been reclaimed to honour by 
such men as Judges Tuthill of Chicago, Lindsay 
of Denver, Brown of Salt Lake City, Dr. Merrill 
of Denver, and that growing list of lovers of chil- 
dren who are substituting sense for scolding and 
brotherly friendship for brute force, through his 
exhilarating sense of being trusted. If you sus- 
pect his motives never let him suspect that you 
do. 

Out in Council Bluffs, la. one section of the po- 
lice force is made up of boys. They do duty on 
special occasions, and the two conditions of ad- 
mission to the "Kid Force,' 9 are efficiency and 
good behaviour between times of serving. To be 
trusted in that way is an ambition that keeps hun- 
dreds of boys on their good behaviour all the time. 
The Chief of Police of Chicago is utilising the 
Boy Scouts in the enforcement of law in several 



HIS MOTIVES 153 

sections of the city. When you depend on the boy 
he can be depended on. 

One of the severest tests of his dependability is 
in meetings which require reverence and sym- 
pathy from him. In the Carter class of more than 
a hundred boys of the Calvary Baptist Sunday- 
school of Chicago, the devotional service preced- 
ing the lesson study, is the most impressive part 
of the hour and it is partly in the hands of the 
boys themselves. They will not allow any irrev- 
erence. The extraordinary efficiency of the Boy 
Scout work is due to the fact that each one is "on 
a Scout's honour." 

A young man who had lost a position because 
of inefficiency, was employed by another firm, be- 
cause they were compelled to have someone and 
he was the only one they could get. Soon they 
noticed that he had good suggestions to make and 
he found that they would listen. He began to 
climb and, before long, was in a very responsible 
position and became indispensable to the firm. 
When asked why he could not keep his first job, he 
replied, "They treated me as if I was a fool and I 
acted like one." That discloses a reason why a 
boy's best must be recognised. To attribute a 
bad motive for the freakish and prankish ways of 
a boy is one way of making him permanently 
prankish, or worse, while the surest way to make 
his motives good is to consider him good and let 
him know that you do. 

Speaking of the more advanced schoolboy, Dr. 



154 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

Stanley Hall says: "Of all safeguards I believe 
a rightly-cultivated sense of honour is the most 
effective at this age." 

It is indispensable that the boy have a concrete 
instance of what honour means, in those who make 
the atmosphere and spirit of home. "When he 
breathes in an atmosphere of unreality, self-seek- 
ing, false reasonings, false treatment, he is dazed 
and stunned and usually loses the sense of dis- 
tinction between truth and falsehood, honour and 
dishonour. During the days when he is mostly 
instincts and impulses, before his conscience is 
actively in command, his elders are his conscience, 
and when they are without that rudder, he is at 
sea. Injustice and unfairness are flagrant in his 
eye and he knows when his own honour is dis- 
honoured. He can sometimes give points to his 
father in more ways than one. 

Sometimes it is a sense of injury that leads 
him to seek by dishonest means that to which he 
is entitled. When his sense of honour is ignored 
and treated as if it did not exist at all, he often 
takes his first step in lying ; many a mother won- 
ders why "Tom can't be trusted,' 9 when she may 
be doing her poor, foolish best to make him an 
habitual liar and thief, with brilliant prospects 
of carrying the process still further. Any one 
can find the fibre of fidelity down in his soul who 
knows how to be a friend to him and show faith 
in him. 

His motives will also need protection. Those 



HIS MOTIVES 155 

that are temporary may be treated in a way to 
disfigure him for life ; in fact the temporary way 
may be made the permanent by false treatment. 
An attempt to suppress the outflow of his tumultu- 
ous nature may make it ingrowing, may bottle it 
up to be emitted all his life in inopportune ways. 
The war-whoop may become malignant if it is not 
allowed to come out in all its innocence. The gen- 
uine good-will must be allowed to effervesce in its 
own way as a protection to his good nature. The 
machinery gets relief by blowing off steam. Ke- 
pression may produce explosion, or compel him to 
seek a congenial environment away from home. 
That is always the beginning of dark days for all 
concerned. 

His motives will also need infection from with- 
out, so as to correct and complete them. If one 
wants to get yellow fever, he needs only to let 
some ambitious mosquito bore into his cuticle with 
a bill that has been dipped in a cauldron of yellow 
fever germs and crawl over him with feet that 
have a good assortment of germs clinging to them. 
Then the victim is ready for the worst. One can 
also have health infection, as by antitoxin and in 
the infusion of pure fresh blood from some 
healthy person. It is of the highest importance 
that a boy's motives be frequently purified by 
fresh infusions of motives of the highest kind. 

"When he is thus assisted, direction will be 
needed more than correction. Formation will 
prevent the need for reformation; if the former 



156 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

is right, the latter will not be necessary. To dis- 
cover his best motives, to discriminate them from 
the secondary and temporary, to direct them in 
righteous and rational ways — this is someone's 
high and inescapable duty. 

But something more must be said of the motive, 
as the power that moves him to action. Motives 
must be recognised in the activities and made to 
work without consciousness. That comes as the 
result of vital possession. Dr. Hall pertinently 
says, "If authority supplement rather than super- 
sede good motives, the child will so love authority 
as to overcome your reluctance to apply it di- 
rectly and, as a final result, will choose the state 
and act you have performed, in its slowly widen- 
ing margin of freedom. In this heat the motives 
are merged into the life and are mechanicised in 
the action." 



XXIV 

HIS FAILINGS 

His failings are exclusively his. He owns them 
but seldom owns up to them. Some are due to his 
immaturity and will disappear with the passing 
of infantile diseases, warts and freckles and child- 
ish features, unless they are fixed by some fool- 
ish older person, who insists that passing phases 
of his development are permanent forms of de- 
pravity and succeeds in turning the changing hues 
into fast colours, all red. That boy showed his 
quality who defined a hypocrite as "A boy wot 
comes to school wid a smile on his face." When 
the nervous Sunday-school teacher said to the mis- 
chievous lad, "Tommie, I'm afraid I won't see 
you in heaven," it was due entirely to his sense 
of humour that had not yet gained its social 
perspective and propriety, that he asked, without 
hesitation, "Why, what have you been doing?" 

Some of his failings are due to his being an 
immature human being, some to being an imma- 
ture man, and the latter will not slough off at all. 
We have to classify them as among his unavoid- 
able limitations, not to be outlawed, but to be 
harnessed up and put to work drawing his per- 
sonality through bogs and over mountains. We 

157 



158 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

are not to look on them as hopeless liabilities but 
as productive endowments. And yet they will al- 
ways be idosyncrasies if not faults. 

He is often tortured with the feeling of being 
misunderstood. He is rebuffed for his humor- 
ous tendencies. A gentleman, just alighting from 
the cars, said to a boy, "May I ask you how far 
it is to the Palmer House?" The youth replied: 
"You may do so this time, but you must never, 
never do it again." He was probably misunder- 
stood and called impudent when he was only a 
humourist. 

There are four kinds of bad boys: The boy 
who is called bad without really being thought so ; 
the boy who is both called and considered bad, but 
is not so ; the boy who really is bad, but was almost 
compelled to be so; the boy who is bad in spite 
of all kind efforts to make him good. 

The boy of the first class is almost sure to be- 
come bad, and to move down into the third class. 
To call him bad is very apt to make him so, un- 
less he is a boy of a very fine sense of humour, or 
has enough good sense to see that the accusation 
is meaningless, a mere effort on the part of some 
folk to appear virtuous, or an exhibition of un- 
regulated playfulness. The problem is not what 
to do with the boy, but what in the world to do 
with people as old as they are who think and talk 
so. The penitentiary would be a little too severe ; 
so would the workhouse. A reformatory would 
be about right and the feeble-minded institute 



HIS FAILINGS 159 

would be just the thing. "A House of Correction 
for Idiotic Parents," would be useful for each 
county. 

The boy of the second class, both called and 
considered bad when he is not is abundant. He 
is considered bad because he has not learned the 
artistic and emotional adaptation of his voice to 
the indoor life; because he celebrates Hallowe'en 
and April Fool's day as often as he can; because 
he has not learned to refrain from wearing out 
his trousers where you don't want him to wear 
them out; because he shirks responsibility and 
hard labour; because he does not show respect for 
the one who calls him bad; because it is easier 
for that one to call him bad, and thus dispose of 
the question, without the necessity of careful dis- 
crimination. Having classified him that way one 
can go on and treat him accordingly, for it never 
seems worth while to try to do anything for a 
"bad boy." "Idiotic" is not just the word for 
such folk. Perhaps the word "brutal" is not as 
scientific and colorless as required. If the boy 
does not become bad it is not their fault, while, 
often, he has the finest elements and sentiments 
to be wished for in a boy. Of course a boy is 
sometimes thought bad because he is found with 
that sort of companions. Instead of bringing the 
charge against him and compelling him to live 
down to the adverse opinion, his true friends, if he 
has any, should rescue him from his degrading as- 
sociates. We may summarise reasons why he 



160 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

seems bad — it may be the effect of hot or humid 
weather, restraint on his out-of-door instincts, dis- 
like of unjust limitations, passion for nomadic life, 
not sufficient or good enough food, lack of physical 
exercise, self-deception, a dreamy, impractical 
disposition. 

The boy of the third class would rather be good, 
if you should put it to a final vote, but in spite 
of himself, he has been made bad. Called and 
considered and treated as bad, he at last says: 
" It is inevitable; I have to be bad, so here goes." 
My soul waxes indignant every time I hear a 
parent say: "You are a bad boy"; "You are a 
good for nothing"; "You are not worth your 
salt." Sometimes the sense of being unfairly 
treated is so acute that the boy loses all control 
of himself. An eminent minister says he was left 
motherless, and his father had no power to secure 
his confidence — in fact, treated him as a bad boy 
till he became one ; but his father was wise enough 
to bring home to the boy one day a stepmother 
who made him her friend and kept him from ruin. 
There is an organ called a heart thumping around 
somewhere in every boy, and if you know how 
to find it and get your fingers on its strings, you 
can lead him into better ways. "Paper, boy!" 
said a man, as he hastened to the station. "Can't 
do it," said the tough-looking boy; "git one from 
dat old blind man across de street." "But I'm in 
a hurry." "Can't help it. Dis is old Blindy's 
territory, and if any boy sells papers in dis block 



HIS FAILINGS 161 

us boys gives him a lickinV You would never 
have dreamed, from his looks, that that boy had 
a heart. 

The boy of the fourth class has had much to 
keep him good but he won't be good. He is a 
mystery. No, not that exactly. He made some 
mistakes a generation ago, possibly every genera- 
tion for ages, in the selection of ancestors. But 
even then two things may be said for the encour- 
agement of his friends: There is a bit of heart 
left; there is some power of choice remaining. 
So environ him properly, let him see in you what 
a sublime being a man can be and invoke for him 
the sleepless sympathy of the "Friend of sin- 
ners." Call in friends to help you; send him to 
the country, or to a new neighbourhood. Tell him 
how people like him. 

Dr. Merrill is almost exactly right in saying 
that the boy is all right and that the problem of 
the bad boy is the problem of those who have 
him in charge. His ancestors ought to confess 
the handicap they put on him in giving him their 
dispositions, and then get to work to protect him 
from the natural consequences of it till he can be 
led to choose something higher and better for him- 
self. 

If his inherited disposition is not hopelessly 
bad, he may be tempted into badness by the pub- 
lic. The city life is in an environment created 
for business purposes and not with a view to his 
interests. Every fault of a boy seems to be ap- 



162 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

pealed to in the average city, with its crowded 
homes and poor playgrounds, and the call both to 
his love for unwholesome pleasures and for money 
with which to pay for them. Sometimes he is sud- 
denly overwhelmed in the results of some blunder 
which he never meant to be a crime, but is con- 
strued as a crime, and for which he is made a 
criminal. A Chicago boy stole a pair of shoes 
which he thought he needed, was taken to the jus- 
tice 's court in a patrol wagon, tried, bound over 
to the grand jury, kept in the county jail twelve 
days in company with hardened criminals and 
was treated as a criminal while waiting to go be- 
fore the grand jury. The passion for mystery 
and romance and for adventure may lure him to 
ruin. The stimulus of the city may excite him 
into abnormal activity. 

The police often arouse the lawless spirit in 
boys. " Daddy " Norris, in the neighbourhood of 
the Bay School in Chicago, is an instance of the 
opposite kind and his influence for good is one of 
the strongest in the whole community. 

There are times again, when every boy finds it 
easier to do wrong and gets a surprising amount 
of outside assistance in doing it. The running- 
away age is from six to eight, the lawless age from 
eight to twelve, and then the sense of law begins 
to awaken in response to the law of the gang. 
During these critical days, it is criminal and often 
fatal to be irritable with him. His boyhood weak- 
nesses aid the temptations — gluttony, vanity and 



HIS FAILINGS 163 

often laziness. All the crudities and contradic- 
tions make him more open to evil. Imitation and 
imagination and, later, the development of the sex 
instincts all seem on the side of temptation; and 
they are, unless he is well cared for. Eapid and 
radical alternations of buoyancy and depression, 
conceit and self-distrust, tender affection and law- 
less defiance rock him to and fro, a seemingly 
helpless victim. 

Dr. Hall says temptations to truancy come 
about thirteen and under; temptations to mali- 
cious mischief at fourteen; larceny and disorderly 
conduct at fifteen; more mature offences at six- 
teen. We must go to his help. 

And yet nature has made provision for his pro- 
tection and a special providence aids those who 
are responsible for him. He has no reinforcing 
memories of former victories, though he is ac- 
cumulating them. His father should have vic- 
tories and hold them for his benefit. He has a 
yearning for companionship and his father has 
been elected to supply him with all he needs. The 
old Spartan law was not far wrong, which held 
the parents responsible for the delinquencies of 
the children. And the teacher was right who said : 
" Whenever I find anything wrong in my school, I 
immediately examine myself and I usually find 
the cause of it in myself. My body is out of or- 
der or some unpleasant event has affected my 
spirits, or I am worn with excessive toil." 

Classify a given wrong first of all, decide if it 



164 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

is a crime, or a misdemeanour, or a blunder. 
Next inquire into the cause, or causes, of it. 
Then remove the cause, even if it is like removing 
one's own eye. 

The point of contact is one of the first condi- 
tions of teaching and you must have a point of 
contact with the boy. Begin at the point of his 
real worth. Assume it. Never doubt him, if you 
can avoid it. If you suspect him of being bad, 
never let him know it till you have tried every 
other means of reclaiming him. Trust him and 
let him feel that he is implicitly trusted. Confide 
secrets to him and thus stimulate the virtue of 
fidelity. When some temptation sweeps him off 
his feet, help him back to self-respecting, yet self- 
distrusting, purity. 

Partnership with him must grow closer as peril 
becomes stronger. Tramping and fishing and 
hunting and playing and reading with, him will 
help. 

If the home were somewhere near right, also 
the schools, also the public in its provisions for 
the physical and mental and artistic and ethical 
welfare of children, there would be few bad boys, 
for heredity would soon become as correct as en- 
vironment. 



XXV 

HIS PUNISHMENTS 

The well-reared boy who slips through life with- 
out getting some sort of punishment — there is 
no such boy. Even if he should never do any- 
thing to require punishment — but no, why deal in 
pure hypothesis? If he should be able to escape 
all the vigilance committees that are after him, it 
would be solely because he is doing the punishing 
and administering the discipline himself, and in 
secret; but we need not tarry over that rare, if 
not impossible, specimen. Some divergence from 
the line of rectitude is inevitable, even when that 
line is clearly drawn by the teaching, and attrac- 
tively illuminated by the practice of those who 
have him in charge. He cannot escape all his 
monitors, including his conscience. So punish- 
ment must come, because, if there be no results of 
wrong-doing, there can be no wrong-doing and we 
have a "fool world" to live in. 

Those who have him in charge have been nomi- 
nated and elected to administer all discipline; but 
you must first catch the hare before cooking it, 
and you must actually find something to punish, 
before the punishment is administered. It takes 
wisdom to know with certainty in every case 

165 



166 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

whether there has been wrong-doing; and, if so, 
what it deserves, how the punishment should be 
administered, and what the purpose of it is. 
There is an intricate problem presented, when his 
parents start out to punish him. 

Sometimes a boy looks impudent, has an irri- 
tating accent and seems to deserve attention on 
general principles. In that case, circumstantial 
evidence becomes conclusive. Sometimes it is his 
awkwardness and not his meanness that leads to 
a break. All of us are interested in what Tolstoi 
writes, and he says his ungainly, ugly, stupid-look- 
ing face and coarse, unshapely hands and feet dis- 
tressed him and made him more intractable when 
a boy. Often it is the sudden awakening of some 
power that compels the boy to do some unusual, 
even unlawful, thing, and he will at once subside 
into docility again. An irritated parent may 
whip him to work off his own anger, and that is 
worse than hanging the wrong man on circum- 
stantial evidence. To mistreat a boy is a crime 
and ought to be treated as such. It is not always 
possible to keep a boy from thinking he is un- 
justly treated and, in that case, all you can do is to 
do right and let him get over his miff whenever 
it suits his convenience. 

Punishment can be reduced to a minimum by 
careful discipline in the directing of his life. Di- 
recting a boy's life is a good deal like directing 
the course of a horse. There are two ways of 
driving a horse, a right and a wrong way. The 



HIS PUNISHMENTS 167 

right way is to hold the reins firmly so that the 
horse can feel the faintest pressure on either 
line. Through that means he will enter with you 
into the enjoyment of the drive. The wrong way 
is to let him have the reins and do as he will, un- 
til he does something you do not want, then to go 
at him and beat him till his skin and his heart 
are sore and he grows weary and would like to 
do something desperate; in that case the horse's 
mistakes are wholly due to the way his driver has 
treated him, and the latter deserves the beating. 
Good discipline will save drubbing. 

It is my solemn conclusion that in almost every 
case the wrong-doing of a boy, that requires 
punishment, could have been prevented by the 
parents, and that they ought to take the punish- 
ment themselves. They ought to have honour 
enough to take it openly and voluntarily, so that 
he may have the moral effect of seeing such a 
rare instance of nobility. There is still an altru- 
istic element in suffering. Sometimes the parents 
are more or less blameless people who have turned 
him over to himself before they have taught him 
to control himself, and sometimes they are fool- 
ish enough to imagine they can give way in his 
presence to any kind of undesirable self-expres- 
sion without sowing dragon's teeth in his soul 
and in their home. If they both, or that one who 
is responsible for it, will only put the instru- 
ment of punishment in the boy's hand and let him 
apply the rod, it will present to him an appeal 



168 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

of overwhelming moral grandeur. It lias been 
tried. 

But when punishment is truly deserved, it must 
be given and the occasion made an epoch in the 
life of the boy. It is not to be made an end in it- 
self, nor a matter of retribution, nor any one's 
vindication, but an education to the boy. It must, 
first of all, bring him back to the line of rectitude 
from which he departed. It must awaken in him, 
not alone a sense of the majesty of right and truth, 
but a new desire to conform his life to it. It 
must be the means of starting a new habit and 
giving him a new attitude of mind toward what 
is right, a new respect for those who stand in this 
severe way for what is right and true, a new re- 
spect for himself, which comes through self-re- 
proach and then self-rectification. It must pro- 
mote every virtue in him and reinforce every 
worthy motive. That must be the aim of the one 
who inflicts the punishment, or his deed is worse 
than the boy's offence. It will not be easy for the 
boy to enter, at once, into sympathy with the 
whole scheme. When he hears: "It hurts me 
more than it does you, my son," he knows one 
way in which it does not and cannot. 

Inseparable from the punishment must be the 
effort to remove the occasion, and even the cause 
of the offence for which it was inflicted. If they 
trace it back to themselves they must protect him 
from themselves, their modes of speech, the at- 
mosphere they create by their inner spirits, and 



HIS PUNISHMENTS 169 

their failure to give him the wise discipline and 
the steady, authoritative direction which his life 
needs. If the cause of it is in him alone, as in rare 
instances it is, they can undertake no higher life- 
task than protecting him against his own faults. 
He will respect authority, but not those who 
wield it like tyrants or outlaws. He may be per- 
suaded to enter into any right scheme of dis- 
cipline involving punishments and rewards which 
means that he will co-operate in his own develop- 
ment — a thing very necessary if there is to be a 
right development. The sentiment of fear, which 
one may appeal to in a right way, may be har- 
nessed up to active work and turned into love. I 
am glad the respectable psychologists are telling 
us that fear and pain are among the indispensa- 
bles of education. Hall says: "Dermal pain is 
not the worst thing in the world and by a judi- 
cious knowledge of how it feels at both ends of 
the rod, by flogging and by being flogged, far 
deeper pains may be forefended. Insulting de- 
fiance, deliberate disobedience, ostentatious care- 
lessness and bravado, are diseases of the will, 
and in very rare cases of Promethean obstinacy, 
the severe process of breaking the will is needful, 
just as, in surgery, it is occasionally needful to 
rebreak a limb wrongly set, or deformed, to set 
it over better. It is a cruel process, but a crampy 
will in childhood means moral traumatism of 
some sort, in the adult. Few parents have the 
nerve to do this, or the insight to see just where it 



170 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

is needed. It is, as someone lias said, like knock- 
ing a man down to save him from stepping off a 
precipice. Even the worst punishments are but 
very faint types of what nature has in store, in 
later life, for some forms of perversity of will, 
and far better than sarcasm, ridicule, or tasks 
as penalties." 

Punishment must be free from threats and 
harshness and anger, for they defeat its purpose. 
It must not be occasional and intermittent, but as 
each need arises. The quieter and freer from 
noise and talk such occasions can be made, the 
more surely will they serve their true purpose. A 
storm of abuse around his head is a greater of- 
fence than the one he commits. Scolding and 
nagging are inexcusable in any one except the 
devil, and he has too much sense to give way to 
them. Punishment must be adapted to the nature 
of the offence. There may be retribution but no 
vindictiveness in it. If food, or play, or anything 
he is especially interested in, is involved in the 
offence, he may be denied that very thing, with the 
most telling effect. All the interests of the boy 
require that he be punished when he does wrong 
and that the punishment be made an indispensable 
element in his moral education. 

Understand the meaning and purpose of punish- 
ment, the nature and grade of the offence, and 
administer the punishment exactly suited to that 
offence ; secure his co-operation in the moral pur- 
pose of it. 



XXVI 

HIS TROUBLES 

His troubles are one thing; the sorrows that 
come from them, another. He has more troubles 
than sorrows, because he manages to turn some 
of the latter into sport and spunk. Part of his 
troubles are imaginary, but they are active and 
efficient and fruitful, till he finds them out. Some 
of the real ones he refuses to recognise, and they 
die a natural death, unknown and unsung, but 
it is pathetic how much real, downright suffering 
he can go through, and it is inspiring to see him 
44 keep smiling" notwithstanding. 

His troubles are partly due to the fact that he 
is only a child. To be sure, he may be one of 
those peculiar combinations of sensitiveness and 
censoriousness which it is hard to endure, and he 
may keep disgruntled and disagreeable all his life. 
In that case he will be a lifelong sorrow and shame 
to his family and friends. There seems nothing 
to hope for, except in the transforming grace of 
God, and he is apt to be too much disgruntled with 
his Maker to avail himself of any offered help. 
He suffers because he is cut bias. We drop that 
kind of a boy right here. 

171 



172 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

Or he may have that combination of egoism and 
egotism which will persist, unless he can be taught 
unselfishness and good sense by a fascinating ex- 
ample, reinforced by an irresistible authority. 
He is unaware of his failing, though no one else 
is. He suffers because he is the centre of every- 
thing; people seem to go by centrifugal rather 
than centripetal impulse, and they fail to revolve- 
around him. He suffers from an overweening 
sense of self. There may be hope for him, but 
the transforming influence must begin at once and 
work steadily. His habits are rapidly forming 
and turning his sentiments into crystals. Crys- 
tals cannot be easily broken. 

Now, when we have made due allowance for his 
imaginary troubles and those which come from an 
almost hopelessly bad make-up, we still have left 
enough to require very careful study and accurate 
treatment. 

The first element we discover is his ignorance 
— hence his lack of self-control. He is new and 
he sees the newness in a distorted and some- 
what discouraging light. He and himself are not 
familiar friends as yet. It was only recently that 
they met for the first time. Sometimes he takes 
himself too seriously; sometimes too flippantly. 
He is constantly running into some new nook and 
corner and compartment of himself that he was 
not aware of before and he finds powers and fur- 
nishings that surprise and somewhat bewilder 
him. This requires him to readjust himself to 






HIS TROUBLES 173 

himself; he is fortunate if he is not panic-stricken 
and put to flight. 

Another element of complexity is the fact that 
both he and himself are steadily expanding, grow- 
ing out of each other's knowledge till he often has 
to say to some newly arrived phase, "It seems to 
me I have seen you somewhere before," and he 
must, even, now and then, say: "I have not the 
honour of an acquaintance with you." That may 
bring on sorrow, especially if the strange com- 
pany seems to be chilly or domineering toward 
him. Strange reactions into sorrow and depres- 
sion come, during which he is chased and driven 
and beaten by some power within his own person. 

There is a time when conscience begins its ac- 
tivity, and can give him intense sorrow till all 
things are working normally and harmoniously. 
The new master brooks no interference and 
sometimes is the occasion of acute pain. His feel- 
ings that have been governing him must surrender 
the reins to judgment and conscience, and they do 
not get into harness together quickly. 

When the social instincts begin to awake and 
the bony structure has been rapidly thrown up, 
like the skeleton of a skyscraper, he has the pain 
of self -consciousness and the sense of maladjust- 
ment to the world around him. If the tender 
flame should get awakened at that time, he is in a 
state of unstable equilibrium, lacking in quieting 
knowledge and reassuring command of himself. 
The sense of that pervasive lack of perfection 



174 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

may be so acute as to depress him. The sense of 
a need that no one may show him how to supply 
may throw a very long and dense shadow over him. 
The thought of being misunderstood often tor- 
tures him. His humorous and playful tendencies 
are not always as interesting to others as to him- 
self. There is a blend of sweetness and awkward- 
ness, with the latter prepondering. 

When some evil sweeps him for a moment from 
his feet, only the eye of God can see the shame 
that tortures him, and no one knows how gladly 
he would listen to someone who could set him on 
his feet again. His inability to express his deep 
affection for parents and teachers makes him de- 
preciate himself, whereas a little girl might ex- 
press herself in words appropriate and accurate 
enough to be printed in a book. 

He is conscious of affections and admirations 
that he cannot express, and would not, for fear of 
being misunderstood. 

He longs for appreciation, for companionship, 
and suffers when he does not get them. He can't 
be contented when people treat him wrongly. He 
is called bad when he knows he is not intentionally 
so. He finds out that some seemingly and pro- 
fessionally good people are vulgar and untruth- 
ful, and he often hangs his head in shame for them. 
In his discovery of the awfulness of death, he 
thinks of it as hanging over him, and no one is apt 
to teach him to think calmly and confidently about 
such realities. "When a lad a pious Sunday-school 



HIS TROUBLES 175 

teacher gave me an interesting book and on the 
blank page was written for me: "Memento 
Mori ' '—< ' Be mindful of death. ' ' Think of it ! 

Yes, a boy's sorrows are real, whether the cause 
of them is real or imaginary. He has three needs 
at such times, in fact at all times. He needs a 
friend who has passed through similar experi- 
ences and who has not forgotten all about them, 
one who can show a tactful companionship with 
him, without impatience or obtrusiveness, one who 
will tell him the meaning of his own nature, espe- 
cially the physical and emotional; he needs a good 
deal of hearty play; he needs work in which he 
can see that others are concerned. 



XXVII 

THREE PERILS 

It is worth while to devote a separate chapter 
to a consideration of certain inescapable, though 
not invincible, perils of boyhood. They are not 
merely possible but actual perils, which he can no 
more fail to meet than he can fail to meet the ris- 
ing sun in the morning ; for they grow out of the 
nature of the boy himself and not out of his en- 
vironment, though his environment may either 
sharpen or soften the perils. 

First is the peril that comes from his natural 
and unguarded suggestibility. This is especially 
the peril of the pre-adolescent boy. Children are 
more responsive to suggestion than are older peo- 
ple, and that is one of the reasons why they are 
seldom allowed to testify in court. The exact 
definition of suggestion is not to our purpose. 
There may be a subconscious self, which carries 
out into thoughts or words or actions the sugges- 
tion made. Or it may be merely the influence of 
one person over another. But the power of the 
teacher and parent and friend is largely through 
suggestion. 

The suggestibility of a given boy will depend 
on three things — the kind of temperament he has, 

176 



THREE PERILS 177 

the kind of training he has received, and the stage 
of development he has reached. The power of a 
given suggestion will depend, in addition, on the 
nature of the suggestion and the person who 
makes it. 

These are things that make it a time of peril. 
His experience does not furnish him an adequate 
criterion for judging of the things suggested; his 
knowledge of motive is very defective; his will 
does not get hold of its work, intelligently and 
steadily, till he is in his teens. For these reasons 
he is ready to take up with any suggestion that 
appeals to his clamorous and discordant impulses, 
especially if it comes from one whom he likes. It 
appeals to curiosity and enlists the imagination. 
A good suggestion has almost as good a chance 
as a bad one, if it has a touch of pathos or love or 
adventure or humour. 

Three main sources of suggestion are to be 
watched — what he sees, what he hears, and the 
persons around him. The pictures he sees reach 
to his depths ; and the actions of which he is the 
witness are very apt to reproduce themselves in 
his imitative actions. People insinuate them- 
selves into him before he knows it. The enemies 
of children use these three means for their undo- 
ing — books, pictures and persons. The picture 
shows are not all bad, but when they are they are 
disastrously so ; the books are not all vicious, but 
there are too many which are, and they are within 
their reach. Few of the people they meet are 



178 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

immoral, but only one of that kind is needed to 
poison the mind effectively. The bad books and 
pictures suggest cruelty and revenge and inde- 
cency, and inculcate the spendthrift habit, as well. 
A boy was arrested in Chicago, the other day, for 
breaking into a house ; and he got the suggestion' 
by reading of another boy who tried the same 
thing though he failed. 

On the other hand, good pictures and books 
have suggestive power for good. A little boy 
named Henry Schlieman listening to his uncle 
reading a translation of Homer's " Iliad" re- 
solves to discover the long lost site of ancient 
Troy, and he does it. Joe Eeid has before his 
vision every minute the picture of Harry Peck, 
the young man who teaches him at Sunday-school ; 
he meets the boys one evening each week for games 
and reading, sometimes goes with them on a Sat- 
urday afternoon nutting party, sometimes on a 
skating party, and, in the summer, for a two weeks ' 
camp. When they see how he also attends to 
business, as if everything depended on it, no sug- 
gestion that ever came to Joe and the other boys 
is quite so powerful as that. 

The only way to keep boys from meeting the 
peril of suggestion is to kill them. The only way 
to protect them when the peril assails, is to give 
them pictures that will arouse them to their best; 
furnish them books charged with an ennobling 
stimulus; bring to bear upon them personal in- 
fluences that will call out their admiration for 



THREE PERILS 179 

those persons and their aspiration for better 
things. 

The second peril is one of the two that come 
with adolescence. I may call it the peril of con- 
fusion due to the sudden awakening of so many 
new elements in his nature and the sudden dis- 
covery that he is in a new world. His voice that 
runs to cover one minute in the basement and the 
next minute soars into the sky, is a fit symbol of 
the period of confusion at which he has arrived. 
The nerves are alternately tightened and un- 
strung. That period of storm and stress, as it 
has rightly been called, is more fully described in 
another chapter. It is often a time of despera- 
tion and discouragement. Some boys have felt 
at that time, that life was not worth living and 
have, with difficulty, restrained their hands from 
their own destruction. This has been true not 
only of geniuses but of ordinary boys. They are 
out in a large world with discordant powers, not 
connected, in a happy way, with any of the 
world's interests or people. The help the boy 
needs is evident. One who knows his difficulty 
and shrewdly establishes points of happy contact 
with him, without allowing the boy to suspect that 
he knows his trouble or is trying to help him, has 
the key to the situation and can tide him over the 
rapids. 

The third peril which belongs to the adolescent 
period is due to the development of the sox in- 
stincts. The currents of new impulses may sweep 



180 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

him off his feet into self-indulgence in a bestial 
way. That peril exists apart from the character 
of his environment, though environment may make 
it more acute, and it is the business of those who 
make his environment to protect him even at the 
peril of their own lives. Obscene talk is like tin- 
der to the inflammable impulses of his nature. 
Imagination may kindle unquenchable flames out 
of the sulphurous material brought to him in that 
way. 

What is to be done for his protection? Some 
writers insist that accurate knowledge of his own 
bodily functions will arm him for victory. Knowl- 
edge of his bodily functions, as he is able to con- 
trol and utilise that knowledge, is right, as far 
as it goes. But some knowledge is to be with- 
held from him even after he has the problem on 
his hands. It is to be remembered that the more 
accurate the knowledge the more it piques both 
curiosity and. passion. We have allowed the idea 
of complete enlightenment of children about them- 
selves to carry us into worse than unwise ex- 
tremes. Sophistication is safe only after educa- 
tion ; education is possible only as one gets control 
of himself; control of one's self can be complete 
only as one comes under the control of the one 
Master of our spirits, the one Lord of our life. 
The absolutely essential protection comes through 
his choice of that One, whose will and help he gets 
in the Bible, with the Spirit's presence and as he 
tries to do the will of that Master. 



THREE PERILS 181 

Whether you have much or little to tell him 
about himself, you must know all about him from 
a personal knowledge of him, from self-knowledge 
and from a knowledge of the results of the studies 
given to boyhood by the students of the subject, 
like Hall, Starbuck, Lee, Coe and such men. To 
be ready with desired information for him about 
himself is to give him confidence in you. Not only 
are you to hold accurate knowledge ready for use 
but you are to give it at the right time. He is 
sure to get a knowledge of sex functions. He is 
entitled to get it from those who seek to lead him 
into self-control instead of exciting incontrollable 
impulses, as is the case when the debased and the 
vulgar are his teachers. But the knowledge must 
be given only as it is needed, and as he can use it 
aright. Knowledge alone is not enough. A no- 
ble sense of responsibility must be stirred and 
noble emotions must drive out the ignoble. Diet 
is a matter of great importance. Cleanliness is 
often a preventive of debasing thoughts. Com- 
panionship and sympathy may prove a preventive, 
without the need of much specific instruction. 
But one other want must be supplied. 

Knowledge is good as fast as it can be used 
and as it enables the boy to gain the indispen- 
sable assistance of the only Master. Parents and 
Sunday-school teachers must help him find his real 
Help. The physical director, who doesn't under- 
stand that deepest need of the boy should not be 
allowed to have any part in his training. To put 



182 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

it frankly, plainly and urgently, the boy's only 
hope of meeting these perils with any satisfactory 
success is Jesus Christ, the Friend of sinners, the 
Friend of boys ; the problem of protecting him is 
the problem of bringing him, by his own choice, 
into vital relation with Christ. That requires wis- 
dom, tact, knowledge, constancy. And your boy 
surely is worth all of that. 



XXVIII 

HIS HOME 

In the midst of his greatest excitements and 
enjoyments there ought to be a steady and per- 
ceptible pull at his heart strings in the direction 
of home ; and there will be, unless there is some- 
thing very much the matter with him, or the home ; 
if the trouble is with him, it probably began with 
the home. There was presumably, a welcome 
for him when he first took his place as a member 
of the family. That welcome must await him 
whenever he returns from work, play, or school. 
If his arrival is greeted with complaints and nag- 
ging about what he has and has not done, he will 
make his arrival as late, his departure as early and 
his absence as long as possible; and he will take 
his permanent departure as speedily as circum- 
stances will permit. If he is regarded as a use- 
less cog in the machine he is apt to throw it out 
of gear. He is very susceptible to suggestion and 
will usually become what he is treated as being, 
whether he is so at first or not. 

There is a story of a boy who heard that home 
is a type of heaven and instantly made up his 
mind never to go to heaven if it was in his power 
to escape such a calamity. He had had enough 

183 



184 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

of that kind of heaven. The boy has his own 
ideas of what a home should be and they may be 
wrong, but those who are making his home for him 
have to work with his ideas as well as their own ; 
and even when his are inaccurate they indicate 
some of his real needs and are worth knowing. 

But when his home is about right and has gotten 
at him in a right way from the start, it will be the 
most fascinating place anywhere to him. Every- 
thing is there, love and welcome and appreciation 
and understanding of him, and discipline and wor- 
ship and fun and laughter, everything but his boy 
friends and the athletic grounds and some other 
such things; but he knows that he can bring his 
friends there at suitable, and even at some unsuit- 
able times, and, while he can't exactly bring the 
ball games and the ice fields and his other sports 
into the home, he can bring the spirit of all his 
sports with him. He is usually sorry when the 
moment comes to drop the game, but when he 
knows he is going into his dear home, it alleviates 
his sorrow. 

And when he goes out into the great world, to 
try his fortunes, it is not because he loves his 
home less but because it has prepared him for his 
career and he feels its power all the more. One 
of the noblest impulses he will ever cherish will 
be the desire to reflect credit on the home that 
made him. All this is on the assumption that he 
had the fortune to get a good home, at the draw- 
ing, for it seems somewhat like a lottery. 



HIS HOME 185 

He is a distinct part of the household and is en- 
titled to a definite place in it where he can be 
monarch of all he surveys. It is mighty comfort- 
ing to him to know that there is one room where 
he is at home with himself. 

He is also entitled to a position in the house- 
hold, as well as to a place in the house, and his 
standing must be in their understanding. If he 
gets the right standing he is willing to do a lot of 
running for the benefit of the family. It is not 
enough to say that he must work because someone 
else is the bread-winner and he ought to be will- 
ing to do something. Another motive must be 
touched, that he is a part of the household and 
what he can do is of the highest value in itself. 
And so it is. 

Manual labour has mental and moral value ; and 
when special talents are utilised it gives a special 
training for his life work. When they are used in 
the equipment of the home, he derives a special 
reward from it. Drawing, painting, music, mod- 
elling, writing, reading aloud, reciting, — these 
may have a productive place in his home life. He 
has to be allowed to be his own self and to do what 
he can do. "When Tom's mother and Joe's mother 
brag each on the other's boy and nag, each her 
own, each is entirely unworthy of her boy. Be- 
sides, a boy must be doing what he is to be doing 
in the future and getting ready for it — interesting 
and intelligent work. 

His place in the home is not in the centre, nor 



186 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

on the throne, but by the side, or under the wing, 
of the head of the home. He is a boy, but only a 
boy. He holds the future, but he must be held at 
present. He is not to be a prig, an overfed pet; 
nor a pig, overfed pork ; nor a despot, an over-in- 
dulged dependent. He is not the centre about 
which the family revolves, nor a tyrant adapting 
it to his caprices. When a boy rules the home 
he ruins himself. He is to be adjusted to the 
family life and not the reverse. He may be a born 
ruler, but is to be under regents till he comes into 
his own inheritance and learns how to rule. 

But in that subordination, he is entitled to find 
respect for his personality, his talents, his indi- 
vidual tastes, his elemental and God-given right 
of choice, on the proper exercise of which his ef- 
ficiency in life depends. Even from the start, his 
will must not be over-ridden, but stimulated and 
steered. If there is a clash between his will and 
that of the household head, all that the latter can 
do is to set forth the penalty of the wrong choice 
and let him have all the facts of the case before 
him in the decision. Let him know that the pen- 
alties cannot be escaped, then let his own volition 
work it out. 

The plans for him must be positive, construc- 
tive, optimistic, sympathetic; not negative, nor 
destructive, nor gloomy, nor autocratic. Those 
plans must be adapted to him and must adapt him 
to the home people. Pie and his father can do 
team work, as he assists with manual or mental or 



HIS HOME 187 

mechanical labor — with the typewriter, or at book- 
keeping or garden-making or farming. And yet 
obedience must often be exacted of him, without 
explanation or option, and he must know what au- 
thority means. 

Ordinarily, when his sense of partnership with 
his parents has been intelligently and practically 
nurtured, he gets discipline and delight, efficiency 
and satisfaction, out of it. It is a whole univer- 
sity in embryo, with technology thrown in. Even 
the care of pets is of great importance in teaching 
him gentleness and unselfishness and sense of re- 
sponsibility. They make use of the whole boy in 
that way. His imagination comes to the aid of 
the family. To call a boy good for nothing and 
lazy just because he dreams is a degradation of 
the one who says it. To accuse him of doing a 
given wrong is to suggest to his imagination that 
form of wrong-doing. To give him the sense of 
appreciation is to suggest that he must be worthy 
of appreciation. 

True respect for him is discriminating and re- 
quires self-respect in his parents. No normal 
parent may blame him for the things that merely 
indicate immaturity or for the evil results of bad 
home influence. Eespect for him makes certain 
hours luminous — the home-coming hour, the meal 
hour, the play hour. On those hours life's high 
lights must gleam. 

One of the interesting occasions is the family 
gathering at the table and it can't happen any too 



188 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

often to suit him. My memory holds very few oc- 
casions so gratefully as the happy meal hours. 
They were social times and all six of us children 
were ready for joke and jest and frolic and fun, 
till it often grew hilarious and sometimes uproar- 
ious. But when the table is made the place for all 
sorts of snarling and reproving and correcting 
and wrangling, the right kind of a boy will feel 
disgraced by it. It spells ruin for him unless he 
recoils the other way in sheer disgust, or finds 
someone in the circle who lives above it and lifts 
him up, too. 

There are profound reasons why no child should 
ever hear adverse comment on another person, 
except when it is necessary for his protection; a 
father is recreant to his high trust when he al- 
lows any one to express himself in the presence 
of his boy in that way, even if he has to incur the 
dislike of the thoughtless or the self-righteous 
pharisee, by rebuking such a person. 

There can be nothing said about his home more 
to his liking than an eminent divine said in an ad- 
dress not long ago. He wants to find in his home 
not a dormitory, or club, but a place where all the 
home sentiments are blessed and dominant. He 
also wants consistency. No deception need be 
tried on him. He also looks for piety in his home ; 
also simplicity, that is, he wants it to be simply a 
home. This is right, for piety means that the peo- 
ple in the home and the boy get together in the 
most loving way with some daily recognition of 



HIS HOME 189 

that other One whom they learn to call the great 
Father. 

The boy must be trusted and have the exhila- 
rating sense of it, as they trusted the boys at 
Eugby. He must find in the spirit of the home- 
makers the spirit into which he will grow, more 
and more. He must find knowledge of delicate 
things in a way that will not excite unwholesome 
curiosity. He must have a share in the work, in 
the deeper thoughts and in the special honours and 
ambitions of his home. He likes that, and it has 
a profound educative value for him. 



XXIX 

HIS BOOM 

He needs a room of his own — needs it in his 
business of being a boy. If he does not get it at 
home he always wants to establish headquarters 
somewhere else — on the street corner, or a va- 
cant lot, or in an old deserted house, or in some 
basement, or in another boy's home ; which always 
lessens his attachment to his own home. The 
rule is that when he will not stay at home, he is 
pushed out for lack of a room. There is usually 
no room for him at home unless there is a room 
for him. 

He is not apt to be blind to the injustice of it, 
either. His little sister, bless her dear heart, has 
the daintiest room in the house, and mamma and 
papa bring her all sorts of exquisite souvenirs and 
decorations, till she is like a pink rose in a garden 
of exotics. But he is often put into any kind of 
a corner, with instructions not to interfere with 
what little he finds there and not to make any 
noise, as he goes to his gloomy quarters, nor while 
he is there, nor on his way back, on pain of being 
asked to vacate the house; and if his sense of 
chumship overrides his pride enough to bring in 
another boy, now and then, he is halted at the 

190 



HIS ROOM 191 

door with a shrill voice which informs him that 
he is not to bring other boys home with him. 
Then when he is compelled to take that bundle of 
energy which he carries around with him out of 
the house and is reinforced by some other boys, 
stocked up with similar supplies of energy, and 
they go off and get into mischief, the people shake 
their stupid heads and say, " Those bad boys 
again," when they would do far more wisely if 
they would organise a vigilance committee to wait 
on the parents of those boys. 

The light of the library is good for his eyes, but 
that is not enough. A corner of the family room 
is better than nothing, provided that corner is 
recognised as his own property at certain impor- 
tant times; and many a boy — and girl, too — can 
look back to happy moments when the crowd of 
little folks was playing at one end of the room and 
father and mother were talking or reading by the 
light glowing at the other end of that dear room. 
But even that is not all he wants. 

He has the proprietary instinct and that cannot 
be fully gratified without a room he can call his 
own. The mere possession of that room may be 
the training that will make him a useful citizen 
and property holder and keep him from becoming 
improvident and a vagabond. It is one and the 
same instinct with him and hence his room has a 
permanent value to him. 

Besides, he has immediate need for it. It is a 
place where he can let off steam and make more 



192 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

noise than could be borne in any other part of the 
house. That is a relief to the rest of the family 
for they can persuade him to be fairly quiet 
everywhere else when he knows that there is one 
room always at his disposal. That room will en- 
able him to secure valuable voice culture. 

His self-respect and social standing require that 
he have a place to which he can bring his friends, 
both informally as individuals and formally as a 
club or gang. If he brings them there they will 
be in a respectable place and not be apt to get 
their relatives into trouble. He will be proud to 
have his parents become honorary or sustaining 
members of the club ; that will give those parents 
a chance to take the sting out of all mischief and 
renew the joys of long ago. If his sister has a 
room to which her little friends can come with 
their dolls and have the sweetest time till they 
get to pouting and all go home, without umbrel- 
las, in a shower of tears, surely he must have a 
place for his friends too. His room is a social 
centre training him for life. 

He wants a room where he can objectify his 
thoughts by means of the things he puts into it. 
The articles, both useful and ornamental, will 
n>atch up with his inner self. If he is an artist, he 
will have pictures, and perhaps make some ; if he 
is musical, he will no doubt have a banjo or man- 
dolin or cornet, and if he is just a boy, he will 
probably have some hair-raising pictures and at 
least a mouth-harp anyhow. 



HIS EOOM 193 

Dainty bed-spreads are a work of supereroga- 
tion ; his room is no parlor, it is a den. Rugs and 
carpets can come in only under strict regulations. 
It is hard to make them harmonise with boys. His 
decorations will be an aggregation of things — 
mostly the implements and emblems of sport, with 
pennants in the place of honor — balls and bats 
and gloves and knives and all the kinds of fire- 
arms it is safe to allow him, from a squirt gun to 
a Winchester. Flags are one of his specialties. 
He is sure to gather up the flags of various coun- 
tries, put "Old Glory' ' in the centre and drape 
the others around it to add to its glory. If he 
has the taste of a naturalist, he is likely to have 
as large a collection of bugs, beetles, flies, toads, 
snails, birds, snakes and grasshoppers as he can, 
and as many of them alive as possible. 

In after years he will preserve those collections 
as happy memories, while others will be able to 
trace a vital connection between the substantial 
citizen, with his thrift and his friendships, and the 
lad who once lived and loved and yelled and 
dreamed; for the virtues of self-dependence, self- 
control, responsibility for one's own belongings, 
companionship, imagination, originality and co- 
operation will have been nurtured by that room. 



XXX 

HIS FATHER 

His father is always a character of importance, 
but there comes a time when he becomes the most 
valuable asset among all the boy's possessions. 
It is not only good for a man to have a boy, but 
more important that the boy have him. When 
they have and hold each other, you find a condi- 
tion that calls for both gratification and gratitude. 
There is no separate chapter given here to the 
discussion of the mother, because, as a rule, the 
father needs suggestions and stimulus more than 
the mother, and I feel less competent to speak to 
mothers than to fathers. 

The story has been told that when Kermit 
Eoosevelt, while his father was president, started 
to the public school, he was asked certain routine 
questions, to which he gave answer about as fol- 
lows: "What is your name?" "Kermit Eoose- 
velt." "Where do you live?" "At the White 
House." "What is your father's name?" 
' i Theodore Eoosevelt. " " What is your father ? ' * 
"My father — why, my father is IT." That 
leaves nothing to be desired. 

He has two very desirable qualifications for his 
fathership, whatever kind of a man he may be. 

194 



HIS FATHER 195 

First of all it is very much to his credit and ad- 
vantage that he was once a boy, and that he can 
have a pair of boys before his mind every day — 
his own boy and himself as he was when a boy. 
He may remember exactly what he was thinking 
about and trying to do, when he was the age of 
his boy. Moreover, he may know where he missed 
it, or hit it as the case may be, and what to think 
of his boy and what to do for him. He sees two 
boys growing up, side by side, the boy of to-day 
and the boy of yesterday, the boy becoming a man 
and the boy already a man and a father, but now 
becoming a boy again. 

The other qualification is that his boy is anx- 
ious to become a man. That, of course, is when 
he is past the age of Paul Dombey, of whom Dr. 
Blimber asked : * i Shall we make a man of him ? ' ? 
and Paul said: "I would rather be a child.' f 
Truly does Charles Dudley Warner say: "One 
of the best things in the world is to be a boy ; it re- 
quires no experience, though it needs some prac- 
tice to be a good one. The disadvantage of the po- 
sition is that it does not last long enough ; it is soon 
over; just as you get used to being a boy, you have 
to be something else, with a good deal more work 
to do and not half so much fun." Just as truly 
does the same shrewd and genial writer say, 
"And yet every boy is anxious to be a man and is 
very uneasy with the restrictions that are put 
upon him as a boy." 

Because he wants to be a man, there is a time 



196 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

when lie ceases to be a " mamma boy," as lie prob- 
ably was till ten years old or more ; he loses inter- 
est in the feminine point of view and becomes 
completely and exclusively possessed by the mas- 
culine. That is the time when his father first 
begins to loom large. Then comes his father's 
great opportunity. Then memory begins to work 
and the lad of to-day and the lad of yesterday 
lock arms and march together. The true father 
becomes the companion, the dominant companion, 
of his son. He does that if — if he has a memory ; 
if he has any idea of the value of life ; if he is much 
of a father. 

The boy will probably find out, fifteen or twenty 
years later, how he had his father keyed up and 
in a quiver all over, during those critical years of 
the youngster's life; and when he does find it out, 
they will be still dearer friends. For that father 
mounts guard and does duty in the boy's dark- 
ness, watching the foes that he sees standing along 
the road anxious to defeat and degrade the boy, 
just as his father stood guard over him when he 
was surrounded by invisible foes ; for if there is 
one thing a boy usually declines to recognise it 
is the presence of danger, whether physical or 
moral. 

That father will be keyed up to be worth imi- 
tating, for he knows what is going on in that boy's 
soul — knows he is imitating his father, just as 
nature tells him to do. Therein we discover an- 
other thing in the man's favour : the boy has never 



HIS FATHER 197 

passed that way before and he is following a trail 
blazed and tramped for him. 

The special perils of boyhood, which are spoken 
of in a previous chapter, that father knows — 
knows from experience and from a constant ob- 
servation of the boy, as the latter passes through 
his critical stages. He remembers how he met 
them and came out victor, or was vanquished. He 
recalls those that were due to his human nature, 
those that only a boy could feel and those that 
were due to the special periods of his development. 

He remembers the danger that came from fond- 
ness for eating, from his vanity, from his temper, 
from the rapid awakening of the sex impulses. 
And that father guards that boy as no mother 
could, guards him as the priceless treasure of his 
life, for whom nothing is too good, for whom he 
would gladly give every drop of blood in his veins. 

That father knows that his boy needs knowl- 
edge about himself, his body and all its profound 
functions, and he must not be left to gain it from 
the vulgar and lascivious, from boys of the street 
and malicious men who work his imagination ir- 
remediable harm. The father knows that, when 
passion is strongest and self-knowledge is small- 
est and self-control is weakest, he has to stay 
closest to him, in thought and sympathy. 

But when that father is mean and selfish and 
tyrannical and unfair and hypocritical; when he 
is always telling how good he was as a boy, and 
makes the story more rosy the older he grows; 



198 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

when lie drives instead of drawing the boy ; when 
he holds him by the collar instead of his con- 
science and uses check reins and choke-straps; 
when his method is repression rather than ex- 
pression — then woe betide both father and son. 
As Dr. Merrill says : "The father is a part of all 
the boy's troubles.' ' 

Nature has given him two things to compen- 
sate for his inexperience and insure his safe jour- 
ney over the unknown path — admiration for the 
man who is to act as escort, because he is a man, 
and is the particular man that belongs to him ; an 
instinct for following and imitating him, that 
works automatically. 

Under the shadow of the pyramids Napoleon 
said to his soldiers: "Forty centuries look down 
upon you"; but that father knows that all the 
centuries and generations to come are anx- 
ious about his son. He is not only to link the boy 
to him, but he stands as a representative 
of the Heavenly Father and must give him 
his really working idea of what that Heav- 
enly Father is. At the same time he fills that 
little soul's ideal of manliness, for he can run 
and jump and skate and wrestle and ride a horse 
and whiz on a wheel. He is not only law-giver 
but hero now. 

Some things that a father must do have been 
already suggested. Now let it be said that he must 
do them in a way to impress the boy's mind with 
three things : 



HIS FATHER 199 

1. That his father knows him through and 
through, so much so that he cannot be deceived 
about any act or motive. That boy must feel the 
grip of a master in his father's hand. 

2. That his father loves him as well as knows 
him. It is not a knowledge that makes him im- 
patient, but rather makes him more patient. 

3. That his father was once a boy and had the 
same weaknesses and needed the same help from 
his own father. It is not a bad thing, on the con- 
trary, a very desirable thing, that his father tell 
the story of his struggles with the same difficulties, 
even if he has to confess some things that cause 
him sorrow. He will be everything he knows his 
boy ought to be. Yes, the good father will know 
and love and associate with his boy, direct him, join 
his gang, go fishing, hunting, camping, rambling, 
working, worshipping with him, and each will 
think that life is worth living. 



XXXI 

HIS BROTHER AND SISTER 

If he has not a brother and sister he is a most 
unfortunate creature, almost as unfortunate as if 
he had no parents. When the home is full of 
children, all the better ; and, best of all, if they are 
as near to his age as they conveniently can be. 
They will do as much to train him as the average 
parents and almost as much as the best of parents. 
The trouble of bringing up an extra boy or two 
is more than justified by the extra boyhood they 
will produce in each one of them. 

An only child is at a very serious disadvantage, 
especially if he is a boy ; for a girl can stay in and 
become a companion for her mother, but the av- 
erage boy has a fermentation going on inside of 
him that he must have some help with or the house 
will become too small for him. 

I have no desire to make the life of any "only 
boy" who may read these words more miserable 
than necessary by telling him how unfortunate 
he is, but the truth must be told, even in this case 
and at the peril of making others uncomfortable, 
for there may be some who ought to know the 
facts. We might as well issue our catalogue of 
woes of the "only boy" at this point, and then go 

200 



HIS BKOTHER AND SISTER 201 

on to something more exhilarating, if not more 
hilarious. 

The "only boy" is apt to get spoiled. His par- 
ents concentrate all their attention on him, instead 
of distributing it to a half dozen. They are al- 
most sure to pet him too much. Every child 
ought to be appreciated and wisely praised but 
petting and coddling are another matter. They 
do too much for him and do not exact enough from 
him. If they don 't spoil him by too much petting, 
they may overdo his training. He may want his 
own way and get it, much to his own injury. He 
is in danger of becoming any one, or all, of sev- 
eral kinds of undesirable citizens — boss, prig, 
dude, coward, or a Lucrezia Borgia, in trousers; 
or he may simply be a "little man," old and in- 
firm before he cuts his eyeteeth. The "only boy" 
gives his parents all the greater work in the pre- 
ventive measures required, and in supplying to 
him the companionship he needs and would get 
from brothers and sisters. 

He grows up without the friction between him- 
self and other children which is so necessary to 
enable a child to find himself. He has no one to 
quarrel with and that is an irremediable loss. He 
has a hard time to learn his rights, or the rights 
of others all by himself and needs some very 
excellent parents to repair the deficit. It cannot 
be said that the "only child" is foredoomed to 
failure. To be sure, from larger families have 
come most of our great men and women, and f am- 



202 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

ilies with an only child have furnished more thai* 
their ratio of the useless and criminal classes, and 
yet some only children have been great and good. 
We are but taking averages and indicating prob- 
abilities. 

An older brother is simply indispensable to the 
little boy's happiness and the little brother is an 
important part of the older boy's life, especially 
if their ages are close together. If some years 
are between them they are both to be pitied. The 
little boy will be pathetically tagging after the 
older one whose tastes and companions are in 
advance, his little heart aching to follow and 
breaking because he can't. The older one will get 
out of patience and be rough, but even so it is bet- 
ter for either one of them than to be an only child. 

With his sister he can't well be a perfect com- 
rade, for the simple reason that she is a girl and 
he is a boy, yet there are great enjoyments and 
some essential training for them both as they play 
together and have other interests in common. A 
little sister is sure to admire his greater strength 
and daring and make him her ideal and hero. A 
vigorous, manly boy can scarcely imagine the 
pride a younger sister takes in him. That is a 
benefit to him beyond computation. It wakens in 
him the sense of responsibility for her and that 
develops character. She checks his tendency to- 
ward roughness, while under his influence she be- 
comes less delicate and more wholesome. 

There seem to be two periods of companionship 



HIS BROTHER AND SISTER 203 

between him and his sister. One comes very 
early, before either can reason about it, and they 
are ready to cry, or fight, or suffer for each other; 
the other is years later, when he is in the social 
era of life and is looking on girls with new eyes. 
Then his sister often becomes a new companion, 
for he learns a new appreciation of her. But he 
and his brother have common interests, all the 
way through. 

One advantage is that he gets the benefit of 
the other children's presence in the house, without 
being fully aware of the advantage ; he may even 
think they are very undesirable members of the 
family yet still become more deeply indebted to 
them for his training, each year. From the way 
they often talk, we might conclude that they re- 
gard each other with deadly, incurable enmity. 
The showers of verbal missiles they rain down 
on each other's heads surely portend life-long dis- 
aster to their friendship, but the next moment it 
is "clear shining after rain"; they instantly be- 
come confidential allies against foes within and 
without, whether those foes are the older ones 
who foolishly interfere, or other children who 
dare to taunt them. Disagreements and quarrels 
they do not regard as incompatible with friend- 
ship or good manners. It is not the quarrelling 
that is always wrong; it is the noise that is unen- 
durable and requires suppressing. If a snarling 
nature is found in a child it is a horrible inherit- 
ance, likely to become permanent, if trained by 



204 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

the example of those from whom he inherits it. 
God have mercy on them and steer their lives into 
peaceful waters ! 

A certain amount of discord seems unavoidable 
and there are two compensations. One is that 
they know how to end their troubles without in- 
jury, except to the ears and fears of the onlooker. 
Nature attends to it. Interference with their 
logomachy is usually a failure and brings only 
artificial results ; sometimes it cultivates a whin- 
ing spirit or the feeling of being ill-used, in a child. 
Eepression and exhortation accomplish little else 
than secure armed neutrality. 

The other compensation is that the children are 
training each other, even when they are discord- 
ant, provided the discords are not habitual. 
They get experience in applying the principles 
they have been taught; and they usually succeed 
to the satisfaction of both affirmative and nega- 
tive, plaintiff and defendant — especially if the 
principles taught have been illuminated in the 
practices of their parents. These contests in wit 
and skill and strength augment their powers, be- 
cause each child learns by experience where his 
rights end and those of others begin ; learns self- 
control and altruism; learns how to take defeat 
without whining or tale-bearing; learns how to 
take care of himself when he meets outside chil- 
dren and yet respect their rights. In a family of 
several, no one child can be boss, or get all he 
wants, or have his way about everything. Per- 



HIS BROTHER AND SISTER 205 

haps the boy and his brother and sister are ren- 
dering their greatest service to humanity in train- 
ing their parents in those powers of insight, 
sympathy, self-control and self-assertion, required 
in bringing up such a group of children. For- 
tunate for the parents, as well, if the family is 
not a "one child' ' family. 






XXXII 

HIS READING 

It is very seldom you find a boy who doesn't 
like to read and when you do find that exception, 
it is usually one who has unusual tastes for some- 
thing else, or has not learned what a time he can 
have at reading. When he does get at the busi- 
ness of reading he is seldom satisfied with less 
than a book a day. 

Of course, his tastes are unformed and are not 
at all versatile. It is before the reasoning and 
the self -directing powers are awake and at work 
and he never wants books that appeal to what he 
doesn't have. What he reads must appeal to 
those impulses and that imagination which are 
there to start with, or he will not read it. That 
limits the literature to a certain class. It must 
have action and adventure. It must conform to a 
boy's definition of a novel — "plenty of talk and 
something doing on every page." It must be en- 
tirely free from abstract reasoning and general- 
isations, except of the most patent and appealing 
kind, but it must be vivid and vital, with all the 
interests of people who have their veins full of 
red blood. 

It is not necessary to exclude history and sci- 
206 



HIS EEADING 207 

ence and politics and ethics and religion from the 
books he will willingly read; but those teachings 
must be put in the form of life, with thrilling and 
manly action. He will enjoy them and call for 
more. He will be getting what he needs, but he 
would revolt at it if it were put in a didactic form. 
It is possible to put the things that are best for 
his growing intellect, his awakening conscience 
and his glowing impulses in a form to be very fas- 
cinating to him and the form may be effectively 
varied from stage to stage of his advance. 

It is also possible, and very easy, to allow 
his reading to become exactly what it ought not 
to become at a particular time — if he reads liter- 
ature that gives the attractions of heroism to vice 
and vulgarity and encourages a certain careless- 
ness in boys. In fact, the chances are in favour of 
his doing demoralising reading, unless he receives 
very careful direction from those in authority. 
It seems easier to interest him in reading of that 
sort, and that sort of reading is often prepared 
for him with more skill than is given to the prep- 
aration of the better kind. Books and papers of 
the reprehensible kind are abundant and aggres- 
sive. Literature for boys is pouring forth, in 
streams, from the press. Fiends incarnate are 
engaged in the production of books and papers 
for boys. They like the money that comes from 
the sale of books and papers as well as that which 
comes from the sale of "liquid damnation.' ' 
Someone has classified the undesirable books for 



208 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

boys as "poisonous," "criminal," "insipid," 
"platitudinous" and "too difficult." 

In our city libraries, they are growing more and 
more careful to keep out not only vicious books 
but those that are too highly seasoned. Several 
authors whom most boys like at a certain age, have 
been shown the door, though a few of their stories 
may not be objectionable. A given style may not 
be very bad, but too much of it may spoil the im- 
agination and set the young life awry, while the 
vicious stories that have terrible fascination for 
the boy nature, unless that nature has been disci- 
plined, are responsible for many a young crim- 
inal. Jesse Pomeroy, the boy murderer, con- 
fessed to Mr. James T. Fields that he had read 
sixty dime novels about robbing and stealing and 
scalping and cutting throats. On the other hand 
it is hard to estimate the uplifting influence of a 
noble book well adapted to a boy's nature. In 
his autobiography Benjamin Franklin tells us of 
some books that had a formative effect on his life 
and one of them was Cotton Mather's "Essays To 
Do Good." Boys may not find it very easy to ac- 
quire a fondness for essays, but there are books 
of a more solid nature than the exciting story 
which so confuses them that they scarcely know 
whether they are riding, or walking, or sailing the 
air. 

Of course, a censorship has to be established 
over his reading and the censor must keep in mind 
what the boy likes best, what is really best for 



HIS READING 209 

him and how to get him to like the best. He must 
know the books; that is certain. When he has 
selected the books he may have some difficulty in 
getting them read willingly. It is fairly easy, if 
the tastes have not already been perverted. If 
they have been, then there is trouble ahead. 

Perhaps the censor can add to the attractive- 
ness of the book by reading it aloud, for the voice 
and the personality add a new element of inter- 
est. Perhaps the boy himself may become inter- 
ested in reading aloud for the benefit of the rest, 
and that will add to the value of the book in his 
esteem. If the censor succeeds, he has done a 
great service for himself, as well as for the boy. 
He has broadened his own literary horizon, re- 
newed his youth and promoted a new fellowship 
with one of the uncrowned monarchs of the radi- 
ant future. 

The following suggestions may be of service: 

First — too much reading, even of good books, 
is not advisable, for it will produce mental dys- 
pepsia. Some reading may be turned into study, 
on which a sympathetic and well-veiled examina- 
tion may be held; all reading should be 
wholesomely varied with work and play. 

Second — after the story form of literature, bi- 
ography is the most attractive, and is, by all odds, 
the most valuable. A carefully selected list of the 
lives of the great men will bring him more benefit 
than any other equal amount of reading. This 
list may include the men who have made history 



210 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

in the past and the men who are making it to-day. 
That is teaching history in its best form, for we 
cannot read the lives of men without learning 
what they did. Such a method will give con- 
tinuity to the boy's reading and insure its con- 
tinuance in useful directions. I count the biogra- 
phies I read in boyhood the best reading I did in 
those days. But biography is a field that has not 
been well and wisely worked in the interest of 
boys. A short life of each of our great epoch- 
making men, written for the purpose of interest- 
ing and instructing boys, would prove about the 
most valuable literary undertaking yet left un- 
done. 

Third — health conditions must be guarded with 
care. Eyes are involved. Posture must be 
watched, for tuberculosis and neurasthenia may be 
incurred by a bad posture. He may undermine 
his health by neglect of exercise. Interest in an 
absorbing book may be accompanied by too great 
an expenditure of nerve force. 

Fourth — keep in mind that his reading is trans- 
forming a human life, for the better or the worse. 
Prof. Huey says: "To completely analyse what 
we do, when we read, would almost be the acme of 
the psychologist's achievement, for it would be 
to describe very many of the most intricate work- 
ings of the human mind as well as to unravel the 
tangled story of the most remarkable single per- 
formance that civilisation has learned in all its 
history. " 



HIS BEADING 211 

Hypnotism, with its suggestions, is not more 
powerful than is a fascinating book to a boy. 
We are discovering the need of new literature for 
boys, books that deal with nature and with human 
life from the beginning, in an ethical yet enter- 
taining way. 



XXXIII 

HIS TEACHER 

His infatuation with school work is not always 
immediate and irremediable. Sometimes it comes 
just as his opportunity for going to school is 
vanishing and all the rest of his days he will have 
periods of penitence over his folly and will fre- 
quently wish the teacher, or his parents, had taken 
the "big stick" to him unflinchingly. Sometimes 
he never cares for what he has missed; but we 
seldom find that sort of a man. His teacher, as 
an essential part of the school system, may fall 
under the same reprobation till his period of in- 
corrigible antipathy to schools is over, and then 
that same teacher will rise into heroic stature be- 
fore his eyes. 

He may naturally take to school, teacher and 
all, asking no questions on that point, but plenty 
of them on other points. In that case he makes 
fair weather with parents, teacher, school board 
and the public generally. Such a good reputation 
so absolutely awaits any boy who goes after it in 
that way that we wonder how it ever fails to be 
a greater attraction to him than any amount of 
fun or self-will can be. But all the mysteries have 

212 



HIS TEACHER 213 

not yet been solved, even with the assistance of 
psychology and pedagogy. 

Between these two extremes there is a golden 
and practicable mean into which a boy can often be 
guided, if the right kind of a teacher has the co- 
operation of the right kind of parents. The 
wrong kind of a teacher can succeed in giving the 
right kind of a boy a distaste for school and all 
that belongs to schools, while the right kind of a 
teacher can usually win the most obdurate and 
obvious opponents of school to an astonishing 
fondness for everything that even suggests a 
school. She does it through his fondness for her 
and she wisely makes use of some of his interests, 
as fun, constructive manual work, play in general, 
his gang, his chum, his collecting mania, saving 
money, music, nature, art, stories, and even his 
sweetheart. If he is managed in the right way, 
even though he is not yet an ideal boy, he may, at 
last, come to like the school for its own sake. Any 
teacher could afford to spend a lifetime in learn- 
ing how to manage boys. 

If the purpose of his school is to put knowledge 
in his mind and to train his powers through his 
effort to get possession of that knowledge, and 
then to give him complete possession of those 
powers along with the knowledge they have ac- 
quired, the teacher is sure to be able to establish 
a point of contact with him somewhere, provided 
she is worth retaining in the school. If all educa- 
tion comes through contact with persons, and boys 



214 THAT BOY OF YOUKS 

are always on the search for interesting person- 
alities, it ought not to take any teacher long to 
establish a happy contact with any boy who comes 
to school. 

The school board cannot always guarantee that 
every teacher will be popular with every child, 
every day, but they can do their best, and when- 
ever they find a hysterical, complaining pedagogue, 
who manages to keep a good working majority of 
the pupils in an irritated and rebellious frame of 
mind a good part of every day they ought to 
know how to relieve the situation. 

In order to be a success with him his teacher 
must regard him, and not the school, as the at- 
tractive subject. She is training him rather than 
working out an educational system. The teacher 
must also know how to get into co-operation with 
his parents. She must have a couple of eyes good 
for not seeing as well as seeing, an active child- 
element in her own nature, a hand that is fine as 
well as firm, and a spirit that is always fair and 
always friendly. These things would make her a 
paragon and such she ought to try to be at least. 
The boy will like her and show it in his own way, 
not as a little girl would, by putting his arms 
around her and telling her how he loves her. You 
never catch him at that. The terms in which he 
expresses his appreciation of her may not always 
be classical literature, but they convey his idea 
clearly. A boy I know speaks of his teacher, Miss 
A., as " dandy,' ' and even sometimes as "peachy.' ' 



HIS TEACHER 215 

He can be attached to the school through his 
other interests as well as by the person who makes 
it attractive. Physical culture will grip him, if 
the school has a gymnasium, or even if it has not. 
The more of that physical culture he gets in the 
form of play the better. Manual training also 
will draw him, even if he never enters any of the 
crafts built on what he is taught to do. And this 
is true because it is not entirely a training of his 
hand and his eye, but of himself through his hand 
and eye. He is having a very good mental train- 
ing in colour and form and in adaptation of means 
to ends. He is also getting his executive func- 
tions started and ready for the demands of after 
years ; and he will often need the skill he is acquir- 
ing. It is useful to be able to be a blacksmith, or 
a carpenter, or an architect, when in a pinch, as 
well as a stenographer or bookkeeper. 

The American boy averages only four years in 
school before he is twelve, and not many after that 
age. It is hard to hold him. A natural dislike 
for school, the need of his services at home, the 
necessity of working to support the family and the 
distracting fascinations of money-getting all mili- 
tate against his completing the course. But the 
teacher may hold him at the breaking-up time in 
the ways indicated. 

He likes his studies all the better wherever the 
skilful teacher can utilise the general knowledge 
he already has and connect it with the activities 
that belong in the calling to which he aspires. In 



216 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

fact, it seems possible to make many a study very 
attractive that way. Figures are used in engineer- 
ing; chemicals in photography; projectiles in war 
— thus the dry details become fascinating. In- 
terest is the thing that secures education and 
makes memory active and reliable, kindles im- 
agination, and binds the school course to the com- 
ing career. His interests are various and ob- 
vious ; it would be strange if not one of them was 
discovered and utilised. 

The best thing his teacher does for him is what 
she does with him and through him. When she 
enters into the work she assigns, or guides him 
to choose for himself, and becomes his co-worker 
she reigns as queen in that school. "When he 
knows her mind is travelling with his mind in 
its toilsome journey through the fields of knowl- 
edge, he learns to put her valuation on his work 
because he puts a high valuation on her. If she 
is wise enough to let him do a little dreaming, with 
her entire approbation, he is sure to think she 
is competent to guide his dreams into their em- 
bodiment in deeds. If his plans are of any in- 
terest to her and she will encourage him to tell 
about them, she has him on her side. If she is 
wise she will know that his dreams have as dis- 
tinct a place in fitting him for his future career as 
do his studies. 

Where vocational training is given, as is now 
being done in some places and will be done a great 



HIS TEACHER 217 

deal more in the future, the teacher and he will 
have much more in common. The schools are 
now considering the whole child as at school, not 
his mind alone : we may expect a great deal more 
for the boy from that fact. Even personal prob- 
lems are within the teacher's observation, and 
he may be much assisted by frank talks, if she 
knows how to invite confidence and clear up dif- 
ficulties; and he may be unconsciously aided by 
a fine and directive attitude on her part. The 
irgument for vocational training for girls and boys 
seems complete: over fifty per cent, of the boys 
will make their living with their hands and almost 
all the girls will become housekeepers ; therefore, 
as the purpose of the school is to fit boys and girls 
for efficient lives, it should give them that voca- 
tional training. 

When the teacher knows the crises through 
which he passes in all his stages and struggles, in 
all their symptoms and suggestions, and gives him 
something positive rather than negative, makes 
wholesome things attractive and wrong things re- 
pulsive, encourages individuality and proves a 
good friend as well as a capable teacher, such work 
wins him forever. After a certain stage in the 
early teens, that teacher ought to be a man. 

I cannot close this chapter with better words 
than these from Dr. William De Witt Hyde : "It 
is not of so much importance what a boy knows 
when he leaves school, as what he loves. The 



218 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

greater part of what he knows he will speedily 
forget. What he loves he will feed on. His 
hunger will prompt his efforts to increase his 
store." 



XXXIV 

HIS LONG APPRENTICESHIP 

Fbom the cradle to his career is a good long time, 
about twenty-five years, and there is seldom found 
a boy who relishes that long wait. It is not that 
he is jealous of the other animals for getting 
through growing and down to business so much 
sooner than he does, when he and they start out 
together — kids, colts, cats, calves and puppies — 
and he sees several generations of the same animal 
family make their entrances and exits while he is 
merely fighting his way to the stage. The lion 
and the tiger are mature at six, the horse earlier, 
the cow earlier still, the sheep at from one to two 
years ; the amoeba and other insects in a few days 
and some of them are born, mature, finish their 
lives and die, all in one day. This lightning 
change in them does not always stimulate his 
patience. He sees the vast opportunities before 
him and is sure they will all be gone by the time he 
gets a chance at them, and, anyway, it looks to him 
just the thing to be a grown man. There are a 
good many things he enjoys as a boy, but they are 
insignificant compared with the good times he ex- 
pects to have when he is grown and can show 
people how to do things. 

219 



220 THAT BOY OF YOUBS 

But if a boy proceeds more leisurely than the 
other animals, it is not time wasted, for when they 
are through he is just getting started on a career 
that will outlast the stars, a career of which the 
threescore and ten years of the life here are only 
the overture; and, because they are only the over- 
ture and therefore to strike the theme of the whole 
eternal symphony, he has to have plenty of time 
to tune up, get his part and do some rehearsing. 
The elephant may outlive him, but he is closer 
akin to angel than to elephant ; the mud turtle may 
outlast him, but he is more like a skylark to wing 
his way into the infinite. 

It takes a long time to get ready for a long 
career. The greatest man the world has ever 
known took thirty years to prepare for only three 
years of work, but all the ages to come were to 
be affected by those three years. The very great- 
est man in all the centuries before that matchless 
One did his life work in forty years, becoming 
a nation's leader and the world's law-giver, but 
he could not have done it if he had not had eighty 
years in which to prepare for it. Goethe wrote 
the latter part of his " Faust' ' in old age, but it 
was the ripe flower of his many years of culture. 
The longer infancy is the chief explanation of the 
longer age of man, for it secures to him both 
the bodily and the psychological requisites of the 
longer life, while it is just the chance he needs to 
get himself ready to make it an efficient life. 

It must also be remembered that when he is 



HIS LONG APPEENTICESHIP 221 

born the boy is lower down in the scale than al- 
most any other animal, no higher than the kan- 
garoo and the possum, and it takes a longer time 
to bring him up from such a depth. What little 
mind an animal has is about as bright at the start 
as it ever will be, and soon knows all it will ever 
know. A baby not only knows nothing, but has 
nothing to know with, and has to develop the 
instrument with which he will do all his knowing. 
An animal's little group of instincts are wide 
awake in a few days, while a boy's mind is waking 
up all his life, with still more waking ahead of him. 
An animal learns his little round of tricks in a 
few days, but a boy has to study it out and ac- 
quire skill and aptitudes. An animal's job is 
simple and small ; a boy has the task of becoming 
not only master of himself, but of the world and 
its forces. 

The development of a child is one of the greatest 
social processes we know anything about, and 
from that standpoint, John Fiske has given the 
long human infancy its scientific interpretation. 
All that time he is doing things, through the things 
which are done for him ; and what he does in that 
way, is perhaps the very best thing he ever does. 
It seems that he is the one for whom things are 
done, but he is doing for others a work that will 
tell on them and society for all time to come. 
Their long and unrecorded nurture of his life is 
the finest discipline they ever have. Perhaps he 
is achieving his very greatest task in fulfilling that 



222 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

long, and often tedious, apprenticeship. Interest 
centres on him as an individual, but we come to 
see that the most striking thing about him is his 
social significance. He becomes at once a factor 
in the industrial and social world. He is being 
trained to become a part of the social organism, 
and all that his life will mean to other people is 
being prepared for in those slow years. 

It is really phenomenal how the interest of the 
family and community centres in the child, and not 
the less so if the child is a boy. The benevolence 
and beneficence which he elicits from them, are 
the finest fruits of character. He socialises them 
as they take him into their lives and as they be- 
come aware of each other in their common min- 
istry to him. 

His most marked contribution is to the family 
solidarity, but that does not limit his influence. 
He promotes parental unity. The planning and 
working and loving bestowed on a common object, 
as fascinating as he is, produces a unity with an 
element that nothing else can supply. And if 
there should be in them tendencies toward divi- 
sions, this may divert their minds and prevent 
permanent cleavage ; by the time they have taken 
him through from infancy to manhood, caring and 
planning for him and giving him an education and 
a start in life, the habits of co-operation have be- 
come fixed enough to carry them along without his 
further aid. By that time he has trained them in 
self -discipline, for many a father is kept from a 



HIS LONG APPRENTICESHIP 223 

less worthy life by the thought of his boy, or his 
little girl. There is a sociality as between the 
parents on the one side and the children on the 
other ; also between the children themselves ; and 
nature has given the boy time to make good in 
both tasks. Other children and other homes are 
the beneficiaries of his fine opportunity for a long 
service, in a social way. 

He has time to give his parents a very thorough 
general training which a shorter childhood would 
not allow — training in power of reasoning and 
foresight, knowledge of human nature, adaptation 
of means to ends, and love in all its elements of 
patience, tenderness and self-control. He has 
time to grow into comradeship with them by de- 
grees and thus furnish something very valuable 
to their lives. He has time, also, for a usefulness 
which not only supplies them aid but is valuable 
training for further usefulness, when he gets away 
from them. 

But his long childhood is just the thing for his 
own education, not only in a general way, but in 
some of his powers especially needed in the future. 
One is altruism ; and a long period of service, for 
which there is no scale of rewards, is the best way 
for him to learn it. 

He grows in the power of choice, as, at the right 
moment, he takes himself over, so that by the time 
he passes from under his parent's direction he 
has himself in control, with far-reaching relation- 
ship established. He has his moral habits formed 



224 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

and fixed by the time he must face moral issues 
and decide them alone. 

Let him learn the way to choose while he has 
assistance in choosing; the way to think, while 
there is some supervision of his thinking. Let 
him be taught that the long childhood is preparing 
the material for many memories, for, as in after 
years he looks back over that long period, the 
varied interests of the epoch-making experience 
of childhood, he will get entertainment and in- 
struction for his own life and the lives of others, 
including, perhaps, his own boy. Let the boy be 
happy rather than grieved, because of his long 
apprenticeship. 



XXXV 

HIS COLLEGE LIFE 

Eveky boy is entitled to a college education, if 
it is in the power of his parents and friends to 
enable him to secure it, or if it is in his power to 
obtain it in spite of their inability. There are 
separate and combined reasons why this is his in- 
alienable right. 

One is that a very large proportion of the young 
men of to-day are availing themselves of the un- 
precedented opportunities for taking a college 
course and college men are becoming much more 
numerous as a class, each year, while non-college 
men are growing less numerous, comparatively 
speaking; the former list will enlarge still more 
rapidly, in the future, with the going of large 
fortunes and myriads of small gifts into the build- 
ing of colleges and universities, while the class of 
non-college men will shrink in a still more rapid 
proportion. Whatever advantage there is in be- 
ing in the rapidly increasing rather than in the 
relatively diminishing class the boy should have. 
"Whatever disadvantage he would have in being 
in competition with increasing numbers of college 
men he should be shielded from. The disad- 
vantages are increasing each year and by the time 

225 



226 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

he is out in the field of action he will need all the 
help of a college training more than young men 
now in the field need it. 

The college does at least these three things for 
him: It trains him in all the elements of man- 
hood, especially the mental; it imparts to him a 
great deal of knowledge which may prove very 
useful some day, especially since the modern 
system of practical education is invading the col- 
leges; it establishes certain relationships, both 
with individuals and institutions, which may be- 
come the most valuable equipment of his whole life. 
These three things a college will do for him, unless 
something is wrong with him, or the college, or 
both. 

Of course a trained mind and manhood is the 
essential thing. If he should forget all the knowl- 
edge he acquired at college and only retain the 
added power to think and gain knowledge which 
he has, as a result of his college training, the de- 
veloped mind would be more than worth all the 
sacrifices he made to get it. "With that mind he 
will be far ahead of what he would have been, if 
he had not gone to college. Statistics partially 
show these great advantages. There are some 
callings he could hardly have any chance to enter 
at all without college experience. Out of every 
seven hundred and fifty men reaching the age of 
twenty-one, only one of them has been a college 
graduate. Now, if a college course has no effect 
on a man 's promotion in public life, then only one 



HIS COLLEGE LIFE 227 

in seven hundred and fifty of our public men 
should be a college graduate. But what are the 
facts? The colleges furnish thirty per cent, of all 
our congressmen, forty six per cent, of the sena- 
ators, fifty per cent, of our vice-presidents, sixty- 
five per cent, of our presidents, about eighty per 
cent, of our supreme court judges and eighty-five 
per cent, of the chief justices. The figures are 
even better by the last census. 

There are some vocations he could scarcely 
enter without it, and if he did he would always be 
crippled for lack of such training; and there is no 
vocation in which he would not be improved by 
a trained mind. The occupations requiring a 
knowledge of electricity and chemistry are grow- 
ing more numerous and firms employing men give 
the preference to college graduates. President 
Thwing of Western Eeserve says that firms in 
Cleveland speak in advance for all their gradu- 
ates, in those departments. Cornell graduates 
seldom have to wait for employment. These two 
colleges are referred to as examples not as excep- 
tions. On the basis of averages, someone has fig- 
ured out that each boy loses $22000.00 in his life- 
time by not going on to college. 

If he should ever be thrown out of his chosen 
work his trained mind would be better able to meet 
the emergency and take up something else; he 
would have more resources to fall back on and 
would feel more resourceful. In truth the college 
course may bring out some latent force or aptitude 



228 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

which, otherwise, would slumber on and leave his 
life entirely unaffected by it, but which would be- 
come a dominant and directive force through his 
whole career. He may never know what he is 
best fitted for till he gets himself and his powers 
drawn out and trained. 

A college course will equip him with some knowl- 
edge of the most valuable kind, knowledge that is 
sure to come to his aid in times of need. All of us 
have thought some things we were compelled to 
learn were useless, save as they furnished good 
exercise, like the drill of a gymnasium, and we 
thought something more interesting would be just 
as good for a drill. But even such dry and im- 
practical matters as logarithms and cosigns and 
the binomial theorem may suddenly come to a 
man's aid. No one is wise enough to know what 
he is going to be doing all the days of his life and 
no one can know what he will not want. Our col- 
leges are now offering everything that will be 
needed as a start to the boy whose eyes are wide 
open. The physical sciences have superseded 
some of the studies that were thought impractical 
by the very practical. 

In taking a college course, the boy establishes 
relationships which may come to be the most valu- 
able result of the course. He will, in after years, 
number among his friends men who will be in the 
eye of the nation and perhaps in the eye of the 
world — presidents, senators, governors, diplo- 
mats, or great lawyers, doctors, merchants, or 



HIS COLLEGE LIFE 229 

preachers. These may lift the boy to his success 
in life. Even the professors in college may be- 
come his friends when he is through and is on an 
equal footing with them. The boy will be con- 
nected up with his college all his life in a way to 
be benefited by it, and he will find it a channel 
through which he can do a great deal of that good 
which we are coming to see a man must do, if he 
would be worthy as a man. The interests of his 
alma mater become his interests and they open up 
social and philanthropic opportunities of the rar- 
est kind. 

Any boy can get an education, if he is deter- 
mined to have it, even though he hasn't a cent 
of money. All kinds of opportunities have been 
thought out and arranged for such a boy. In fact, 
those who have founded our colleges may almost 
)e said to have had him in view, in piling up endow- 
ments and creating scholarships and fellowships 
and providing remunerative employment for him. 
In his own community there are lawyers and doc- 
tors and teachers and business men and ministers 
who have made their way unaided and they are 
a constant object lesson and encouragement to 
him. He can get work as janitor, or waiter, or 
dish-washer, or in trimming lawns or clerking on 
Saturdays, or tutoring, or driving autos, or car- 
riages, or — aeroplanes. Education obtained that 
way has many advantages. The boy knows what 
it means; he knows its worth; he has put forth 
determined effort, and the culture of the determi- 



230 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

nation is vital in education; he has learned to 
adapt means to ends. There is a whole group of 
manly qualities brought into action in such a 
struggle — independence, industry, self-assertion, 
true pride of character, as contrasted with false 
pride, and sympathy with those who make the 
same fight. Other things being equal, he will be 
worth a great deal more to society and to himself, 
if he has to get his education by struggle. But if 
he hasn't that advantage of struggle with ad- 
versity, he should be sent to college anyhow. 

But what college should he go to ? I think I can 
name about four characteristics that ought to be 
looked for and identified in the college. Bear in 
mind that the whole boy is being trained and not 
his mind alone. "We have gotten beyond the old 
heresy that he goes to college solely for his mental, 
and into society for his social, and to church for 
his religious, training. He is to get all of them 
wherever he goes. Efficiency, ideas, which means 
atmosphere, personal relationships and oppor- 
tunities for action — these are the things to look 
for in a college. 

We needn't pause for a single word on the first 
requisite, for a college that doesn't do college 
work will get an accurate rating by the public. 
The matter of ideas, or atmosphere, is easily over- 
looked. A college that lessens a boy's respect for 
things religious is undermining the foundation on 
which it stands. There is not a college or a high 
school or a university in our country that would 



HIS COLLEGE LIFE 231 

be in existence, if it had not been for Christianity. 
Even Girard College is not an exception. He who 
said, "I am the truth,' ■ and has been stimulating 
people to live by the truth, has also stimulated us 
to search for the truth in all fields of research, 
and to teach the truth to growing minds. The 
atmosphere of truth and reverence and religion is 
more important to the boy than any amount of 
truths he may learn. There is such a thing as 
.-learning truths at the expense of truthfulness. 
There is another thing no one has the right to for- 
get: the schools of our country were founded by 
religious denominations and even our public 
schools had a distinctly religious origin. The edu- 
cational work of the United States, save that of 
the public schools, was done by the Christian col- 
leges, till the era of the great state universities 
a few years ago. The personal relationships to be 
established have already been spoken of. The 
kind of teachers is an essential matter. 

The institutional relationships to be established 
are not always a consideration with boys, or even 
with their parents. If it seems reasonably certain 
that he is to be a member of a given denomination 
of Christians, it is important that he attend a col- 
lege of that denomination. Something might be 
gained in the way of breadth, by attending a 
college of another body of Christians, but much 
would be lost. He will always owe a duty to his 
own denomination; he will also be under obliga- 
tion to support his alma mater. If the two sets 



232 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

of duties conflict, it may so divide his limited 
abilities as to impair bis usefulness in both re- 
lationships. But if the two sets of duties coincide, 
it enables him to serve both his church and his 
alma mater with success. Another consideration 
in favour of going to his own church school is 
that the advantages of culture, which his people 
had and which he indirectly enjoyed, came, as a 
rule, through the sacrifices of the church of his 
fathers. He is already too much of a debtor to 
his church to ignore its schools. 

He must be encouraged to take plenty of time 
to secure a broad, general, basal training, before 
he attempts to build the special vocational struc- 
ture on it. He has plenty of time. The oppor- 
tunities are getting better every year and if he 
should rush out now, he might miss some of the 
best that will come on about the time he should 
be fully ready. Every calling is requiring a more 
cultured man. Farming is going to be scientific 
in the future and farmers are likely to become 
about our most cultured people, in the years to 
come. Artisans and mechanics need to be men 
of culture. 

The home must keep in touch with him, while at 
college, through a knowledge of what he is study- 
ing, of his companionships and of his standing in 
classes, among his friends and with his teachers. 

It is due both to the parents and to the boy to 
say that, if he doesn't succeed in getting a college 
education, before going into his career, it is not 



HIS COLLEGE LIFE 233 

to be considered for a moment as a ground for 
discouragement. There never were such oppor- 
tunities before for taking special vocational 
courses of study. Correspondence schools, night 
schools, summer schools and university extension 
classes have been devised to aid him in making up 
for the earlier neglect or lack of opportunity. To 
be sure he will be at a disadvantage, but he has a 
chance and many a man has gone on and taken an 
academic degree while supporting a growing 
family. It is a struggle to be avoided if possible, 
but to be welcomed if inevitable. 

In addition, he lives in a time when more knowl- 
edge of a popular and scientific nature is in circu- 
lation and held in solution in the atmosphere than 
there ever was before, while books, papers and 
magazines are within the reach of every man. 
Any one who wants to become learned in any one 
line can do so, though he will always be at a dis- 
advantage if he fails to get the discipline of a 
thorough education in his early years. 

Perhaps it is the most important thing to re- 
member that it is the boy himself who is to be 
trained, through his powers, and that training and 
discipline and culture are to go on till the end of 
his life. The chief value of a college course is to 
develop in him the power to live his life and do 
his work and get him into a habit that will prove 
lifelong. 



XXXVI 

HIS VOCATION 

If he gets his right vocation at the right time it 
will be the right settlement of a question that 
ranks among the most solemn things in life. If 
he gets into the wrong vocation, it will be like 
wearing a pair of shoes that do not fit, but insist 
on pinching and rubbing and irritating, and he 
is not likely to have ability to change to the right 
thing. But he must not enter his calling till he 
has gotten beyond the boy stage. Then why con- 
sider the matter in a discussion of boys at all? 
Well, for two reasons, surely. He is getting him- 
self ready for it unconsciously, and his rulers are 
deliberately and intelligently preparing him for it. 
At least they are if they are true to him. 

He is moving right on steadily toward his call- 
ing, when he has a chance to let himself out and to 
engage in some preliminary preparatory callings. 
His first vocation is play and that he pushes with 
a devotion worthy of him. He cannot have made 
a better choice, and you pronounce him a success. 
You say he will be heard from yet, and you base 
your conclusions on the fact that he has already; 
been heard from mightily. 

That preparatory vocation is quickly succeeded 
234 



HIS VOCATION 235 

by another, also play, in which he is busier than 
ever. For he has now added something else, go- 
ing to school, and perhaps running on errands and 
helping about the house, or the school, or with the 
horses, or in the field. All along he is getting 
ready for his life work, without knowing it, and 
without showing it, save to trained and penetrat- 
ing eyes. 

Another preliminary vocation follows soon — 
still play. But this time it is team work. His 
social instincts are at work and the sentiment of 
otherism is getting hold of him. On through the 
gang period and into the chum period it extends, 
and then some definite plans are likely to be form- 
ulated. All through those periods he has been 
dreaming of being all sorts of things, and he has 
been doing some things. He has been dreaming 
of being cowboy, lion-hunter and the whole line 
of things familiar to those who are familiar with 
boys. He has been doing such things as peddling 
papers, or working on a farm in summer, or being 
an errand boy, or raising vegetables on shares. 
He is really doing valuable preparatory work for 
body and brain and heart and hand. 

But you notice that he seldom becomes just what 
he first wanted to become, and he seldom continues 
in what he starts to do. There are reasons for it. 
He is simply doing whatever he can get his hands 
on, in order to have some fun or make some money 
to do what he would like to do. Besides, he is 
learning by experience what not to do. And we 



236 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

must not forget two facts, that his strongest apti- 
tudes may be still dormant, and that he has not yet 
the power of final choice. 

When he has made his preliminary experiments, 
has found those deep and determining aptitudes 
and has developed his power of definite and deci- 
sive choice, then he will have very little difficulty 
in finding his calling. He cannot well make a 
mistake and, if he does, it will be a mistake that 
can easily be corrected. 

The study of vocations was never so thorough 
as at the present time. The public schools are 
likely to do some training of that kind. At any 
rate, the manual training has vocational, as well 
as intellectual and ethical, value. That is doing 
much to acquaint boys with their own aptitudes. 

He might fit into any one of a group of related 
callings, like building and contracting, milling and 
the like, because the sense of the mechanical is 
dominant. If he is a barterer he can trade in al- 
most any line. Or he might be a dentist, or drug- 
gist, or a doctor, and make no mistake in either 
case. Any one of kindred professions might be 
suitable for him. He may have to have experi- 
ence in one before settling in a closely related call- 
ing. His talents and taste must harmonise with 
his trade. 

It must not be supposed that he came to his call- 
ing in a fortuitous way, or solely by self -direction. 
It had to be, in the final decision, his own choice, 
for it must ever be a choice and not a coercion. 



HIS VOCATION 237 

But others were preparing him for the momentous 
decision. They were watching over his play, giv- 
ing steady direction, tactful correction and con- 
stant protection, and the subtle power of making 
wise choices was growing in the lad. They were 
preparing his body by wholesome food and the 
right exercise, in work and systematic training, 
as well as play. They were developing his mind 
till its more hidden and tardy talents should come 
forth to give their voice in the council chamber. 
In doing so, they sent him through as thorough 
courses in school and college and university as 
possible, so that he would not fail of any needed 
equipment. For they knew, also, that the boy 
with the well-trained mind has a distinct advan- 
tage over the rest of the boys. If they want him 
to become president of the United States, they 
know that his chances, according to the way it has 
already been going, are not nearly as good with- 
out a college education as with it, while he has a 
still poorer chance to become a supreme court 
judge and almost as poor to become a United 
States senator. He has only about one-ninth as 
good a chance in the usual callings. 

He should also be taught a trade, as the Jews 
used to teach their boys. The old rabbi was not 
far wrong in saying that he who did not teach his 
boy a trade did the same as teach him to steal. A 
trade gives one useful knowledge, skill, sympathy 
with toilers, and may provide for some unfore- 
seen, yet very serious, emergency. Our manual 



238 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

training schools are preparing our boys for their 
callings. Those who have charge of the boy must 
help him get a technical training for his calling, 
by sending him to school or directing his reading 
and teaching him how to observe. 

The boy will need an avocation, too, a side call- 
ing, in which he may find recreation after work 
and reinforcement for work — a means for utilis- 
ing the by-products of his main calling. Usually 
that takes care of itself. It may be music if he is 
not a professional musician ; art, if he is a business 
man; literature, as Lubbock and Stedman and 
others have made it ; it may be one or two of many 
things. 

He may very profitably take over the many 
callings by groups, so that he may give his tastes 
a chance to be conscious of themselves, — the me- 
chanical, industrial, science, art, agricultural, 
transportational, professional groups. This may 
prove a great assistance to him. 

There is one other element in selecting his call- 
ing and that is the presence and plans of Him who 
gave us the raw materials for all our callings and 
gave us the aptitudes for them, who still exercises 
a providence over us and has His personal plans 
for us. The boy must be taught to respect the 
fact of providence and to co-operate with Him 
whose will is working constantly and personally 
in guiding us here. Yet he must also make his 
own choice. 

Learn what the boy is fitted for; train him in 



HIS VOCATION 239 

that direction; bring him within the influence of 
the occupation for which you consider him best 
fitted; step back and let him decide it; if he makes 
a mistake don't allow him to grow discouraged, 
but patiently work with him till he has found his 
place. 



XXXVII 

HIS RELIGION 

Some people feel sorry for the boy who is not a 
tough, or at least an unfortunate, one whom the 
professional students call a "delinquent." The 
delinquent seems to get most of the kind thoughts, 
the kind words and the flowers from an increasing 
number of people, while the real first-class boy 
who does somewhat as he ought to do is passed 
by. The " delinquent ' 9 holds the centre of the 
stage. 

Yet there would not be many delinquents if we 
only knew how hungry almost every boy is for 
the best things, provided they are brought to him 
in such a way that he can take hold of them. If 
one's religion is the attitude he takes toward the 
invisible Father above, then that, as Carlyle says, 
is the most important thing about anybody, even 
a boy. And a boy's grandmother has no more 
reason for having that right attitude than he has, 
nor as much. Nor is it easier for her than for 
him. It is the same religion in both, even as they 
may eat the same food at the same table. But in 
her, that food reappears in a bent body, soft, baby- 
like flesh, beautiful grey hair and extensive wrin- 

240 



HIS EELIGION 241 

kles, while in him it becomes an erect little body, 
knotted muscles, stubby hair and smooth skin. 
They get their religion in the same way — the same 
loving Father, the same gracious Saviour, the 
same instructing and inspiring Bible; but in one 
it reappears as grandmother, in the other as boy. 

His religion should come in a most natural way. 
In fact it should be his vital breath. He finds 
himself in a physical world and must adjust him- 
self to it, with food and water and air and exer- 
cise, and he does it by directing and correcting 
himself, though of course with suitable assist- 
ance. He does this because he feels his limita- 
tions, has a sense of need. That is what we call 
physical adjustment. 

He is in a world of truth that his intellect must 
get hold of and so there must be a constant intel- 
lectual adjustment. In like ways he adjusts him- 
self to his social world. In each case he has a 
hunger, a sense of need, an inner propulsion. 

He is also in a world of moral forces and of 
spiritual existence. They appeal to him. It is 
his sense of need that leads him into a peaceful 
and loving relation to God and under the influ- 
ence of that relationship he lives his religious life ; 
but he does it as a boy. A boy has a hunger for 
God, as he has for food and friends and fun, but 
he does not always know what it means. He has 
the same taint and bias that the rest of us have 
and the same disinclination to all the pain he may 
experience in the readjustment, but it is only the 



242 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

process, and not the peace to which it leads, that 
he dislikes. 

He is just as ready as the rest of us — in fact, 
more ready — to give up what is wrong and accept 
what is right and to worship and serve God. He 
may have a much more acute sense of need and 
may more eagerly lay hold of the help that comes 
from the Father above. He has all the material 
for a religious life, if he is only helped to see the 
meaning of his hunger and to secure its gratifica- 
tion. 

But he must be religious in his own way. It 
will be wholly personal devotion to the person of 
his Lord and to those with whom he is connected. 
Therefore, it is social. No boy is religious to him- 
self. He is a hero worshipper, and this instinct 
is dominant. The "gang" instinct is a part of 
the same spirit. His divine Master is more di- 
vine and lovely when he can regard Him as one 
of them, and interested in him and his friends. 
It is not abstract but concrete truth that he likes 
— truth in the form of persons who appeal to him. 

His religion is therefore emotional. It fires the 
feelings and the imagination. In original and 
spontaneous ways his feelings express themselves, 
but usually through his actions. 

His religion is active. Interest and activity are 
the laws of his nature. He gets it ingrained by 
what it leads him to do. It is not a fence around 
him, but a force within him. He is not a doc- 
trinaire; he is both a dreamer and a doer. Let 



HIS RELIGION 243 

him have something to love and to learn and to do 
and he is happy. He is ready to show his feelings 
in extravagant ways, sometimes scenic, always sin- 
cere. He is interested less in God's attributes 
than in His actions, more in deeds than in doc- 
trines. He is a partisan and is ready to stand by 
his own religious crowd till he expires. 

His religion is militant: something to do and 
something to dare. The idea, recently expressed 
in some few books, that he is so very militant he 
must first have a fight with any newcomer in his 
Sunday-school class before he and the rest of the 
class will welcome him, is untrue in fact and a libel 
on his nature as well as on his religion. He is 
militant, but it is not of the physical kind, not nec- 
essarily. He does like a contest and when he is 
truly religious he wants to buckle on sword and 
go forth to smite sins, private and public, and 
liberate their victims. Let him think of his 
faults and sins as horrible giants and he will make 
war on them. He often fights the good fight of 
faith when we know nothing of it. 

His susceptibility to religious influences and 
impressions comes at intervals, with the awaken- 
ing of each new power, like the will and the con- 
science and the social impulses. The sense of 
need which he then experiences seems to make him 
look out from himself to a power higher and bet- 
ter than the human. It seems that his conver- 
sion ought to come at the very first of those awak- 
enings. It is one of the structural needs of the 



244 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

boy, not like the need for education, but more like 
that for food or water. If he is not converted 
then, it means religions abnormality and may 
mean degeneration. 

The rise of the sex instincts is a time for the 
most active religions sentiments, because that is 
the time for the perception of far-reaching rela- 
tionships, both to man and to the Infinite; also, 
because it is a chaotic time, when the foundations 
sometimes seem to give way beneath him. That 
is the time of all others to establish him, in a di- 
rect, personal communion with God. It is the 
time when he is most susceptible to God's touch, 
when he is in the greatest peril and when his 
whole future life will be most powerfully affected 
by such an experience. Students of the psy- 
chology of religion are saying that conversion is 
an adolescent phenomenon. It doesn't come nec- 
essarily, as the voice changes and the beard grows, 
but it is the time when his own natural processes 
make it fitting and needed and relatively easy. 
If he is not converted then it is not impossible. 
He will still have a religion, but it is likely to be 
the religion of self and he will miss the vital 
knowledge of his Heavenly Father and His chil- 
dren. He may be converted in after years, but he 
will have suffered irreparable losses. No one can 
find rhetoric too strong to set forth the needs of 
his nature for a true religious life at that time. 
His religion is personal, emotional, active and 
militant. It must be presented to him having 



HIS RELIGION 245 

those elements, and must never be spoken of as 
something abnormal to him. 

It is personal in the sense of being social. The 
person, through whose touch he is awakened to 
the new life, will seem scarcely less than divine 
as the boy's admiration sees him. A boy who was 
in the London Polytechnic under the famous 
Quentin Hogg went astray, in after years. One 
day a teacher in the "Tech." met him and in- 
quired how he was doing. His reply was that he 
often fell, but he carried a picture of Hogg in his 
pocket and that often helped him to overcome 
temptation. A boy's religion leads to companion- 
ships and the growing ties that will be like cables 
binding him to safe moorings. 

The food for his religious life is in the Bible 
and it is marvellously adapted to minister to the 
essential characteristics of his Christian nature. 
He not only has a memory to retain it, but he has 
an appreciation of it. Its geography may be 
made attractive and more so as he tries to repro- 
duce its features with drawings of his own. The 
world's greatest heroes are portrayed in its pages 
and he may learn to enjoy them more highly than 
any other heroes. The most exciting battles are 
told and they are battles in behalf of righteous- 
ness. 

His religious life may be nourished by biog- 
raphy, especially that of men who have been noble 
and great in unselfish achievement, at home as 
well as on mission fields. He can easily be led 



246 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

into friendship with people of religions natures. 
The leader of his religions life will have much to 
do with its character — one who loves the Bible and 
knows how to make it homely and vivid, one who 
understands him and knows how to direct and 
utilise his sentiments. 

He may, very easily, be taught that the whole 
life is to be religious, even when he is on the 
athletic field and in the gymnasium and in the 
school. Play is all the better for piety. At the 
time when he most needs friendships, religion will 
establish them most surely and happily. 

He is capable of taking a useful part in religious 
services. It has sometimes been claimed that he 
ought never to testify in meetings, on the ground 
that he will be artificial and learn to use forms 
of expression that will not and cannot mean any- 
thing. The remedy for it is to teach him the 
meaning of Christian testimony and encourage 
him to give it, in right ways and at suitable times. 
He is capable of having a wholesome and impor- 
tant part in meetings of different kinds. The 
things that come most easily are ushering 
and waiting on others, though he is entirely 
capable of participating in the devotional exer- 
cises. 

Of course, his religion is primarily a problem 
for his parents to solve, but it is also the problem 
of the church. The purpose of the church is to 
save both the soul and the life of the boy, the part 
of the life that goes before, as well as the part 



HIS EELIGION 247 

that comes after, his conversion. The churches 
have done much for him. They are doing much 
in providing interesting preaching for all the peo- 
ple. We must not disparage that and thereby be- 
little the gospel or the preachers of the gospel. 

It's a mistake to suppose he doesn't enjoy the 
regular Sunday morning services of the church. 
If he doesn't, in many cases, it will be found to 
be caused by the assumption that he doesn't, 
which he has heard till he imagines it is true. He 
has been cheated out of his birthright of enjoy- 
ment. We owe it to him to inform him he is miss- 
ing something that was gotten up for him as well 
as for others, something which no one else can 
enjoy quite as well as he can. Then, when he 
comes to church, we have to make good, by put- 
ting all those elements, which his nature requires, 
into the sermon and everything else. We shall 
likely find that the rest of the people have been 
longing for the same thing. The musical fea- 
tures, the fervent prayers and the fervid elo- 
quence appeal to him. When I was a boy, the 
fervent and famous Eev. Thomas Rambaut 
preached several times at our country church, and 
no one could ever express the rapture with which 
I hung on his words, though I understood very 
little of what he said. Truth is, a boy ought to 
hear a great many things that he can't under- 
stand, though they will put him to sleep or give 
him the fidgets if they do not excite his wonder 
and admiration. If he sees and feels the preach- 



248 THAT BOY OF YOURS 

er's passion for truth, his sentiment of brother- 
hood and that nameless thing we call magnetism, 
these things will be effective in firing his imagina- 
tion and fashioning his ideals. Yet much can be 
brought within the comprehension of the boy and, 
when the preacher does it, he wins the older peo- 
ple besides. 

But something more than preaching is to be 
done by the church. It must lead the boy in the 
nurture of his Christian life in the three requi- 
sites for all growth — food, air and work. That 
life is to be nurtured by communion with God. 
No better figure of speech can be employed to de- 
scribe the relation of prayer to the sustaining of 
the religious life than this: "Prayer is the 
Christian's vital breath, the Christian's native 
air," and that will always be true. The church 
must nurture his prayer life by her meetings for 
prayer adapted to his stage of growth, by the 
prayers of her Sabbath services and by positive 
teachings about prayer. 

The figure of food expresses well one of the serv- 
ices of the Bible to the Christian, though it also 
is a "sword" and it is "light" for the steps, as 
well as food. For all these purposes the church 
is to equip his mind with the contents of the Bible. 
It may do this in classes, as in the Sunday-school 
and in the use of the Bible in the ordinary serv- 
ices. It is my definite judgment that the very 
reading of the Bible, in the regular services, may 
be made an illuminating commentary and a strong 



HIS EELIGION 249 

incentive to the people to read it for them- 
selves. 

The culture of his life through Christian work 
is attempted in the Sunday-school, through the 
organisation of classes for work and in other 
groups, as clubs and bands, in which use can be 
made of all the aptitudes and instincts found at 
his various stages of growth. His interest and 
efficiency in social service, in benevolence toward 
the unfortunate, and in missions grows astonish- 
ingly, when it is accurately cultivated. Almost 
every Sunday-school can give vital assistance to 
parents in the culture of the boy in those direc- 
tions. 

Two plain facts must never be forgotten. One 
is that obedience to the earthly father trains him 
in a respect for the heavenly Father's will, and in 
obedience to it. Lofty earthly friendships make 
it easier to know his best Friend. It follows that 
the father who fails to exact true obedience from 
him is as unnatural as the one who denies all re- 
sponsibility for his religious training. If the 
duty of supplying him with what his life needs is 
involved in parenthood, then the parents are pri- 
marily responsible for his religious life, till he is 
capable of taking it in charge himself. That is as 
much involved in parenthood as responsibility for 
bread and clothes and education and a start in life. 

The other fact is that a distinct and accurate 
plan for his religious culture is as essential as for 
his physical or mental culture, at whatever ex- 



250 THAT BOY OF YOUES 

pense of time and money and labour. Money 
spent in equipping him for the life that is at the 
heart of his whole nature will prove the best spent 
money of all. 

No amount of trouble should be spared in bring- 
ing him under the vitalising and directive control 
of Christ, humanity's Head, without whom the boy 
will lead a headless life. That directive Head will 
inspire his ambitions, purify them and then grat- 
ify them. Contact with Christ will make him in- 
dustrious, for it will give him a deathless devo- 
tion to the tasks that duty puts into his hands; 
it will make him honest, and "the honest man 
though ne'er so poor is king o' men for a' that"; 
it will make him magnanimous and sympathetic, 
so that the successes and joys, or the failures and 
sorrows of another will be his; it will make him 
superior to the ills of poverty or lowly or unfor- 
tunate birth ; it will make him brave, to meet any 
kind of danger or duty. 

That boy and the Man Christ Jesus must be 
brought together, if it takes every foot of ground 
you own, every head of stock you possess, every 
shelf of goods in your store, every moment of your 
precious time and every ruddy drop that is dis- 
tilled through your loving heart. He will never 
cease to be. A broken life is an eternal horror ; a 
perfected life is the sublimest object on earth and 
surpassed only by his glorious Friend and Mas- 
ter. 

THE END 

3477-3 



immmSXJS, CONGRESS. 






